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THE 



Credible Chronicles 



OF 



The Patchwork Village. 

'SOOTsTSET BY THE SEA. 



EVELYN T. UNDEEHILL & CO., 



NO. 22 SPRUCE STKEET, NEW YORK. 

I 



\ //Or- 
1886. \ ^-'^j^ 






F7^ 



COPYRIGHT BY 

E. T. UNDEIUIILL cfc CO. 

lb«G. 



Preface. 



To the readers of this book who purchased it unadvisedly 
and without fault of their own, I owe and I tender an apology. 
Nothing is due to those who successfully resisted the 
blandishments of the publishers. They are able to take 
care of themselves. 

It was written at different times and in varying moods. 
Like a 'Sconset cottage it was made in sections, without 
unity of design, and certainly with no thought of inflicting 
it upon a patient and long-suffering public. Any credible 
statements contained in it were concocted without mali- 
cious premeditation, and I am not conscious of even a 
mischievous intent rankling within my bosom. Whatever 
is absolutely false was introduced under the belief that 
draped fiction would be perused by modest readers in 
preference to the naked truth. But it did dawn upon my 
understanding that, if its parts were securel}^ lashed to- 
gether, the total result would sell and that I would thereby 
greatly profit. I don't believe that anybody's mental, 
moral, physical, or financial constitution will suffer an irre- 
coverable strain by its publication ; unless it be the pub- 
lishers'. But they take their chances. If the event shall 
prove that I am mistaken in this view, I give due notice 
that any attempt to recover damages, either actual or ex- 
emplary, will be resisted bj' every device known to the 
law. 

New York, September, 1884. * 



w '■ mum 




A PATCHWORK VILLAGE. 

One hundred and twenty miles nearly south-east of Bos- 
ton and directly south of the peninsula of Cape Cod is the 
Island of Nantucket, famous for its connection with the 
whale fishery, and for near a century as the nursery of 
American seamen. On its south-east corner is a little vil- 
lage, like unto which there is no other. Its aboriginal 
name was Siasconset ; but the natives of the island, iu 
ordinary speech, have eliminated its first syllable and call 
it 'Sconset. It is quaint in appearance. The surf beats on 
the beach before it. The air and surroundings possess 
qualities to afford rest to mind and body. Quiet is the rule. 
Fashion has never gained a foothold within it. Excitement 
must be sought. To cares, strangers become indifferent. 
They are free from multiform troubles that are common to 
those on the continent. Neither mosquitoes ; nor walking 
matches ; nor millionaires ; nor tramps ; nor earthquakes ; 
nor cholera ; nor coaching clubs ; nor beggars ; nor political 
crises ; nor duns ; nor corners in lard ; nor stock privileges ; 
nor chills and fever ; nor strikes ; nor city statesmen ; nor 
gin-mills ; nor trichinae spiralis ; nor kid gloves ; nor theo- 
logical polemics ; nor fast horses ; nor operatic dissensions ; 
nor boisterous revivals ; nor dynamite conspiracies ; nor 
malaria, disturb the even tenor of human rest and enjoy- 



8 A PATCHWORK VILLAGE. 

ings that to-day give architectural character to the village. 
They were put up on the edge of The Bank that they might 
be near to, and yet be in safety from the sea ; for in those 
days, during heavy storms, the waves dashed over the 
beach and against the bluff on which the houses stood. In 
time, a second and a third row were built up in the same man- 
ner, each running in a parallel direction with the first, and 
thus narrow streets but little over twenty feet in width were 
an incidental result and were not laid out by design. 

Now and then the wives, daughters and sisters of the 
fishermen paid them visits for a day or so at a time. They 
enjoyed the pure and invigorating air of The Bank and even 
the primitive life their husbands, fathers and brothers led 
was not without its charms. With their advent, even for 
temporary sojourns, additional comforts were necessary. 
Old window sashes were brought from the village on the 
other side of the island and fitted into the sides of the 
houses. Floors were laid. A little shanty of inclined boards 
was put up at the end under which to hang a kettle or set a 
f lying pan, to do^the necessary cooking, and this, in its 
turn, may have been the beginning of a second room of the 
dwelling. As families increased and visits became more 
frequent, other improvements were needed. Two or three 
little sleeping rooms were built on, at the other end. They 
projected beyond the line of the main room in front and 
rear, and the roofs over them were sometimes brought to 
within four or five feet of the ground. These little bed 
room additions became known on the island as "warts" and 
are still so designated by residents. Odds and ends of 
furniture were brought from elsewhere to make the house 
habitable for protracted stays. Bedsteads and bedding 
superseded the bunks on which they had.slept. Then a fire- 
place made of stones, held together with clay, was put up, 
and from its top a chimney of boards allowed the smoke to 
escape through the roof. In time, another room was added 




ol 



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i 






10 A PATCHWOEK VILLAGE. 

or perhaps two, at one end of the house for use as a 
"porch," by which term a kitchen is known on Nantucket. 
A brick chimney then replaced the old one made of 
boards. Then a shingled roof became a matter of necessity 
and comfort. Next, joists were run across, under the roof, 
to support a floor and thus a little cramped attic was made 
to furnish additional sleeping accommodations during the 
season of fishing. In time the sides of the houses were 
shingled. Then, perhaps, a little cellar was dug to preserve 
their food untainted during the warm weather. Next some 
extravagant fisherman made the innovation of lathed and 
plastered walls from which to scowl at his less pretentious 
neighbors. In a very few instances a cistern to catch water 
was built, but, in most cases, it is still received and stored 
in casks standing at the corners of the houses. 

What I have here briefly sketched was not the work of 
one or even two generations, but required near a century to 
complete. No man saw the beginning and completion of 
what has been described in respect to any one house. But 
still more room was needed. The "Proprietors" of the 
island had either formally or tacitly dedicated The Bank to 
the use of fishermen, who " squatted" upon the ground 
they thought they required and each squatter was in close 
proximity to his neighbor on either side, with but a few 
feet intervening. When he could no longer enlarge 
at the end of his house, he must of necessity build on at 
an angle, from the front, or the rear, or on both, accordingly 
as space was available. The additions were made out of what- 
ever material was at hand. Or perhaps the builder purchased 
an old boat house, or small barn, or a little house on another 
part of the island and took it down and brought it to The 
Bank in sections. In some cases the beginning of the 
dwelling was brought from Sesachacha, another "fishing 
stage" two miles to the northward of Siasconset, or from 
Madoket or from "The Town," as Nantucket is called, either 



PATCHWORK DWELLINGS. 11 

of them several mUes distant. The timbers in a given house 
were used without regard to their thickness, for sills, or 
studs, or joists. One may have been taken from a wreck 
stranded upon the beach ; others from an old house in 
The Town ; still others from bams that were sold for old 
material. Old doors were got, here and there, of different 
sizes and patterns. If too long they were " razeed" to suit 
the height of the room. One might be made of a single 
board 18 or 20 inches wide, and another panneled and 
another battened. Those leading into the open air uniform- 
ly swung outward as a precautionary measure against 
gales ; for the owners naturally reasoned that it would be 
easier to blow a door in, if it hung in the usual manner, 
than it would be to blow the entire house over if the door 
closed from without. On many of the doors wooden latches 
with latch strings are still to bo seen, and on a few are the 
original wooden hinges on which they were hung at the 
time they were placed in position. Windows of odd shajjes 
and sizes, both in respect of sash and glass, were fitted into 
the sides of the house, and in at least one house there were 
a dozen windows with no two alike. In time brick fire- 
places and chimneys superseded those of stone and wood 
and the chimneys, sometimeo two and a half feet square, 
project through the roof from a room, perhaps, not more 
than 10 feet by 12. And when completed the structures had 
assumed shapes so fantastic as to be like nothing in the 
heavens, nor on the earth, nor in the waters beneath the 
earth. 

But this was not all. From the wrecks of vessels the 
carved figure-heads, or strips containing their names, were 
taken and brought ashore and nailed to the gables of the 
houses for ornamentation. Or, if the figure was of life size, 
it was set up in the front j-ard and from year to year is re- 
painted, in bright colors, as a model for visiting artists not 



SEA SIDE STATUARY. 13 

to follow in reproducing the human form divine. The 
most notable example of a life size figure is that to be found 
in front of the residence of that ancient mariner Captain 
William Baxter, which has been preserved in thousands of 
photographs. She is a ligneous virgin and though she has 
been under the inspection of residents and visitors, heaven 
knows how many years, the most virulent gossip on The 
Bank has never uttered a word against her chastity. 

The streets on which the old houses are situated indicate 
the incidental origin and growth of the place. They run 
north and south. In the latter part of the 18th century, a 
heavy gale made such an inroad upon The Bank that one 
row of houses was in danger of falling over, and they were 
removed further back. Again, in a southeast gale, which 
happened in October, 1835, and which the 'Sconsot men will 
tell interesting stories about. The Bank was so rapidly 
washed away that one or two houses went down, and a half 
dozen others would have followed, but that they Avere re- 
moved. So the old streets are now reduced to three. They 
are intersected by little openings which, at the beginning of 
the village were spaces from five to ten feet wide, and were 
used only for the passage of wheel-barrows. In latter years 
through some of them vehicles pass to the edge of The Bank 
and down the roadway to the beach. But the houses are 
not set in a line with the street, nor are the sides of the 
streets themselves in a direct line. Mathematical accuracy 
was not thought necessary for the purposes of the pro- 
jectors, and much less were land surveyors dreamed of to 
ensure right lines. Some abut directly on what may be 
supposed to be the street line. Others are a little back 
with a board or picket fence, sometimes on the border line 
between utility and ruin. The lots on which they are built 
may be anywhere from 25 to 40 feet in front with a depth 
no larger. The ruts made by the wheels of the passing 



14 A PATCHWOEK VIIiLAGE, 

vehicles are always to be seen in the centers of the streets. 
Of artificial sidewalks there are none. 

In the center of the village is the old pump .which was 
placed in position in the year of the Declaration of American 
Independence, when some fifty of the people interested in 
the place made subscriptions of a shilling and upwards, to 
dig the well and construct the pump. To day it still exists. 
It is picturesque in appearance and annually many views 
are taken by the camera and by artists. At night lighted 
lanterns are suspended in front of the dwellings by the ten- 
ants to facilitate movements through the village in the dark 
and they also give a lively appearance to the village. 

But a glance at the interiors of the little houses is sufficient 
to suggest that the architects were seafaring men, whose 
ideas of house building were largely gained from their ex- 
perience on shipboard. By the settling of the sills and 
Joists, sometimes the floors have assumed the convexity of 
a ships deck, which might well give rise to the thought 
that the builder intended it to recall recollections of his 
life at sea. The snug parlors, perhaps, six or seven feet 
in height, and in length and breadth not twice as large, re- 
mind one of ship cabins. The small bedrooms are little 
more than state rooms in their proportions, while available 
spaces are used for closets that are little more than cabin 
lockers slightly enlarged. To ascend to the attic there is a; 
step ladder fixed at a slight inclination, or it may be a mere 
succession of rungs fastened perpendicularly against the 
side of the room by which to climb as best one may. Every- 
thing within suggests snugness, comfort and convenience, 
as the object of the builders. On the walls are ancient pic- 
tures, some very crude both in design and execution, 
suggestive of domestic life or illustrating the dangers of 
whale fishery, or giving views of foreign lands. On the 
mantel-piece there may be a couple of brass candlesticks, a; 



PATCHWOEK INTEEIOES. 15 

pair of snuffers with an antique vase or two. Oft a rag 
carpet, such as our grandmothers cut and . Avove, covers 
the floor. Chairs of patterns in vogue a hundred years ago ; 
antique tables with spindle legs and carve^ feet ; queer old 
clocks, some the production of Connecticut skill a half a 
century since, and others brought from England or Holland 
by old shipmasters, and which are now owned by their 
children, grand-children or great-grand-children, perhaps ; 
four post bedsteads on which feather beds and patch-work 
quilts are laid ; bureaus with oval fronts and odd brass 
handles or glass knobs to move the drawers ; mirrors of 
French plate glass and frames of fantastic scroll work ; or 
others of early American manufacture, with the plate 
surmounted by a landscape painted on glass, showing im- 
possible trees, impracticable houses and lakes, the solid 
waters of which exhibit all the hues of a vigorous but ec- 
centric rainbow ; cutlery and crockery of odd shapes and 
patterns and of all ages, ancient and modern, some pieces 
of which may have been in the families of their owners for, 
perhaps, three generations, and even pewter plates and 
platters may be intermixed on the cupboard shelves. Now 
and then, the iron crane still swings in an ancient fire-place 
and on it are hung the pots and kettles for cooking the 
daily meals of the inmates. As no house is furnished 
with any thought of unity of design, it is apparent that the 
articles were brought by their owners from their homes in 
"The Town." Whatever was not needed there was 
sent to 'Sconset for immediate use, or for storage until it 
should be wanted. 

During the war of the Eevolution, Siasconset had a con- 
siderable accession in its growth ; and again during the 
war of 1812. The same causes operated alike at both 
periods. By the middle of the last century the interests of 
the island had become almost wholly identified with the 







H 



^1 



ZENITH OF THE ANCIENT VILLAGE. 17 

whale fishery ; but the advent of the war made the pursuit 
hazardous. Some of the seamen did suffer capture and im- 
prisonment, Cut off from supplies from the main hind, 
with a soil too poor to afford sustenance from the products 
of the earth, they were compelled to follow fishing for food, 
and it was at these periods that some of the houses were 
constructed on The Bank or were brought thither from 
other parts of the island. But with the return of peace, 
the old industry of the island was resumed and was con- 
tinued until the zenith of its prosperity was reached, about 
1840, when, with nearly ten thousand inhabitants on Nan- 
tucket, everybody had all the employment he could wish in 
whatever productive calling he was engaged. At that 
time there were public houses at 'Sconset and even a 
billiard room and bowling alleys, to afford recreation to the 
fishermen or to returned seamen, who sought rest in the 
village prior to again going on a cruise which might last for 
years. 

Some of the houses had become the occasional residences 
of well-to-do families in town and several of the more 
wealthy had erected, on new streets laid out, dwellings 
more pretentious and even approximating the styles of 
modern structures, though most of them, following the 
traditions of the place, were built in sections and em^body 
more or less some of the peculiarities of shape and form 
which are seen in the old houses on The Bank. 



DECAY AND RENOVATION. 

The decadence of the whale fishery resulted in an indus- 
trial paralysis within the limits of Nantucket. The men 
had been bred to the sea and to a special branch of service. 
Every industry of the inhabitants depended on that for its 
prosperity. Landsmen went elsewhere to seek employ- 
ment in commercial cities. Seamen made their way into 
the merchant service. Ship after ship was sold. Store- 
houses were empty ; wharves were deserted and went into 
decay. Candle houses were torn down and the timbers and • 
lumber sold for old material. Capital sought investments 
in other fields. Sporadic efforts were made to organize new 
industries to stay the tide of emigration from the island, 
but one after another they failed and brought ruin or dis- 
aster upon the promoters. Year by year the population 
lessened. In 1849, near a thousand of the young men 
sailed for California to seek their fortunes in the land of 
gold. The values of real property on all parts of the island 
fell until zero was nearly reached. Even then there was little 
demand and fewer sales. Houses and lots in The Town 
sold for a fifth or sixth of the original cost of the buildings. 
On The Bank matters were ev(m worse. Families emi- 
grating offered the little houses for sale at any price. 
Wl aliiig captains, then out of employment, with but slender 



b^tllECtATED VALUES. 19 

incomes trom their savings purchased dwellings there and 
sought by fishing to eke out a subsistence. Some of 
them, though beyond the tliree score and ten of man's 
allotted life, still continue in the pursuit, and each Spring 
and Fall venture out on the waters. Other houses were 
kept in the family that their sons might gain a livelihood by 
fishing and have shelter during the night and in storms. 
But 'Sconset cottages had no value. One of the best and 
most commodious now on The Bank was bought by an old 
captain on his return from California, for $75 and two 
quintals of codfish. Year after year he has occupied it at 
night during the fishing season, while by day he is braving 
the dangers of the deep in his dory. Another was sold for 
a hundred dollars. A third, for a long time, was rented 
at six dollars a year. 

Matters went from bad to worse until 1879, when the 
population of the island had diminished to little over three 
thousand souls. In that year a well built house compara- 
tively modern, but constructed after the 'Sconset pattern 
was sold with two acres of land adjoining, at auction, to 
close up an estate, for $127. Another commodious modern 
built house containing fifteen rooms, fairly finished, with a 
half dozen out buildings, seven acres of land and a 'Sconset 
cottage built on the edge of The Bank, 300 feet distant from 
the surf were offered to a New York man, by the executors 
of an estate, for $1,400. The buildings could not have been 
replaced for near throe times that amount and the furniture 
for less than $500. Frightened at the unheard of cheapness, 
the party did not dare to accept the offer. Within three 
years it was sold in separate lots for $2,500, and six years 
after the offer was made, it could not have been purchased 
for $10,000. For a new morning of prosperity had dawned 
upon Nantucket, and especially upon The Bank where the 
sun daily rises before it from the sea. 



Mam. 



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THE NEW BIRTH. 21 

Near the close of tlie late civil war, an occasional family 
from "The Continent," as the natives call the main land, 
visited Siasconsct and hired one of the little houses ready 
furnished, to enjoy the invigorating air, bathe in the surf 
and experience a season of absolute rest, to return to their 
homes in the Autumn redruited for the cares and labors of 
another year. The advantages of the situation gradually 
became more widely known and each year the number of 
visitors increased until, at last, every house which its 
owner would consent to let found tenants for the summer 
in families of refinement, intelligence and even wealth, 
from most of the principal cities from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, and as far as the west coast of South America. 
The dilapidated shingles were torn off and replaced by new 
ones. Next they were white or yellow washed, and some 
at last painted. Fences were repaired. Old shutters or 
blinds gave place to new ones, or they were placed on win- 
dows that had never known them before. The interiors 
were repaired, furbished and tidied up, and now the little 
dwellings, some portions of which may be two centuries 
old, and all evolved from fishermen's cabins, but with the 
same charming quaintness of style, ai'e rented each season at 
sums for which the owners, twenty years ago, would have 
gladly sold them. A second hotel was built, to which, one 
"annex" after another was added until its principal building 
within a few feet of the beach looms up in larger propor- 
tions than all its other parts. The town authorities 
awakened to the fact that Nantucket had still a future as a 
summer resort, as a haven of rest for tired out business 
men and brain workers, and a sanitarium for invalids. 
They improved the roads. The little passage ways be- 
tween the houses on The Bank, not more than 10 feet in 
width nor more than 25 feet long, have been dignified as 
streets and christened with the names of 'Sconset families. 



22 DECAY AND RENOVATION. 

Street lamps have been put up and are nightly lighted. A 
little railway has been completed from The Town which 
skirts the south shore of the island, giving the visitors a 
splendid view of the ocean during the greater portion of its 
length ; and since the advent of the locomotive, within a 
single season more strangers visit Siasconset than in a 
quarter of a century before. 

In the meantime, the demand for the little cottages ex- 
ceeded the supply. Persons who had become enamored 
of 'Sconset cottage life, purchased land on The Bank and 
undertook to supply the demand. Within three years, pre- 
vious to 1885, over twenty houseswere built and furnished 
to rent to summer visitors, while nearly as many more 
were erected by families for their own occupancy, and the 
work of improvement continues each year. Some of the 
new structures are modern and ornate in style, in strange 
contrast with the generally modest architecture of the 
island, and markedly so when compared with the 'Sconset 
cottages. Others follow the old traditions, except that the 
rooms are more commodious, and have complements of 
furniture and housekeeping appliances to ensure the com- 
forts of the occupants. 

The popularity of The Bank, as a sea-side home, is largely 
due to favorable climatic influences. It is on an island 17 
miles in length, following a line through its center, with a 
width, at its greatest breadth, of four and a half miles. Its 
shape is irregular and will be best understood by a rtifer- 
ence to the map. Sixty miles distant from the continent, 
the hot land breezes are unknown. To the north is still 
water, except during the prevalence of heavy gales. On 
the east and south the surf is ever beating upon the beach. 
The island has but one harbor of any importance and that 
the port of Nantucket, not far from midway between its 
eastern and western extremities. An extension of this to 



QUIESCENT THERMOMETERS. 23 

the north and east, a distance of six miles, affords admirable 
facilities for safe rowing and sailing. To and from this 
harbor all visitors to the island come and go. 

The climate is equable. The insular situation will in 
part, account for it. Being narrow, every breeze that is 
wafted over it is from the sea, and there is scarce ever a 
time when there is not more or less movement of the air. 
Hot days are hardly ever known. The mercury seldom 
rises above the point of summer heat. In observations 
extending over six years, it reached as high as 89 degrees 
but four times ; and it does not mount above 82 degrees 
more than half a dozen days during a season. On those 
days the duration of warmth, so unusual, is never more 
than three or four hours, and then the sea breezes make 
visitors unconscious of what might elsewhere be an oppres- 
sive heat. At such times the thermometers in Boston 
and New York register the temperature far up in the 
nineties, and they sometimes reach a hundred and over. 
But as nightfall approaches, the air becomes delightfully 
cool and during the hours devoted to sleep a pair of woolen 
blankets is always an acceptable covering. 

In tlie winter the temperature is correspondingly higher 
than on the main land. During the summer the nearly 
vertical rays of the sun penetrate the shallow waters which 
surround the island, and impart to them its heat. The 
winds passing over the waters receive from them their 
warmth and are blown upon the surface of the island. To 
the east and south is the Gulf Stream, with its warm cur- 
rents from the tropics perpetually moving past the coast, 
and the western line of which is only 30 miles distant. Its 
existence was first discovered by the adventurous fisher- 
men of Nantucket, and by them was made known to navi- 
gators. Winds from the south and east passing over it 
receive warmth from that source. Thus with the cold 



24 DECAY AND BENOVATION. 

winds tempered by the ocean currents before reaching the 
island, Autumn frosts are kept back until the last of Octo- 
ber, and sometimes until November. Snow is seldom seen 
on the island. Sleighing is so infrequent as to be a 
curiosity. Ice does not form of sufficient thickness to be 
cut for storage more than one year out of two, and hence 
the greater portion consumed is brought from the 
rivers of Maine. The mean range of the thermometer in 
winter is several degrees higher and in the summer as much 
lower, than in Boston. 

By reason of its equable climate Nantucket has become 
popular as a resort for invalids in winter as well as in sum- 
mer. Mr. Charles O'Conor said at the close of his first 
summer's residence "In my opinion, between June and 
September, Nantucket has no equal as a cool and healthy 
summer resort and I shall probably make it my permanent 
home." Six months later, when he had passed a winter 
on the island, what had been a probability became a fact ; 
for he continued to live on Nantucket during the remainder 
of his life, and made but few and very brief visits to New 
York when some special interest made it imperative. In 
September, 1883, he said to a friend that he should prob- 
ably never leave the island again alive, but in March, 1884, 
he found it necessary to visit the city ; and during his ab- 
sence he contracted a severe cold. Three weeks after 
he became severely ill and died. 

The presence of shallow water and the nearness of the 
Gulf Stream have an ameliorating effect in summer upon 
the temperature of the waters that wash the southern and 
eastern shores of the island. To this fact is due the pop- 
ularity of 'Sconset beach for surf bathing. From early in 
July until late in September, the waters are scarce ever 
uncomfortable and are always invigorating. Visitors who 
are familiar with seaside resorts from Mount Desert to 



WARM WATERS OFF THE BANK. 



25 



Cape Mcay speak in the highest praise of the comfort, 
pleasure and wholesome result of bathing in the waters off 
The Bank. 




^'feVynt/cVHtV-K' 



REST AND APPETITE. 

Purple and fine linen are in no demand at 'Sconset. Flan- 
nel shirts for men and flannel dresses for women are in 
keeping, and if not the regulation costume might as well 
be. "Plug" hats are only affected by well-to-do natives, in 
The Town. Old clothes come into play and he who criti- 
cises does it at his peril. Now and then a family on their 
first visit wear white shirts and fashionable dresses. They 
are not ostracised in social circles nor even frowned upon 
by a despotic public opinion. Their example is neither 
contagious nor infectious, and the Common Council have 
never passed an ordinance requiring them to be put in 
quarantine. The life of even the ultra dude, gotten up in 
the most elaborate style of man millinery, would not be in 
danger. And to the free and easy life that pervades The 
Bank is also due its popularity as a seaside home. 

During the first week the stranger would be astonished 
at the amount of rest he can put in, if drowsiness admitted 
of the emotion. But that is impossible. Twelve hours a 
day passed in slumber is not an unusual experience. During 
the other twelve he is only sleepy. 

Marvelous stories are told in illustration of the somno- 
lency which languidly greets the visitor. Captain William 
Baxter (of whom more hereafter), is authority for the 



SLEEPINESS. 27 

statements which follow. There is not a man on the 
island who willnotgo bonds for his truthfulness — at times. 
He says that strangers have fallen asleep when but half 
through with a sneeze, thus leaving the sternutatory effort 
incomplete, with muscles unrelaxed, and the whole face 
presenting the continuous appearance of enjojang the ec- 
static orgasm of a resonant sneeze, until, on waking, the 
final explosion is reached, and the features relax and as- 
sume their natural expression. 

Still more singular was the case of a lightning rod man 
who visited The Bank one season and made a dead set for 
Captain George W. Coffin. Everybody on the island knows 
that the Captain cannot say "No," unless he does it under 
a misapprehension, for he is too obstinate to do it under 
compulsion. Like others who dispense deceptive expedients 
to eliminate death from thunderbolts, this particular visitor 
had enticing and insidious ways. He did, then and there, 
before the Captain was aware of it, seduce him into order- 
ing a lightning rod to be put on his dwelling ; also one for 
his grocery store ; likewise a third for his barn.; moreover 
a fourth to be attached to his kerosene barrel ; and was in 
the midst of a convincing argument that, without a fifth on 
his hen roost, and a sixth on his pig pen he hazarded his 
chickens and eggs in presenti and his pork in futuro, when, 
by good fortune that delicious languor which follows the 
inhalation of 'Sconset air came upon the designing light- 
ning rod man, and in just two minutes by the watch, his 
eyes were closed in a delightful sleep in the Captain's big 
arm chair. Climatic influence came to Captain Coffin's 
rescue. In a moment, he had recovered from the persua- 
sive eloquence to which he had been subjected, and quick 
to perceive the advantage of his situation, with the help 
of his neighbors he put the sleeping sharper on his load of 
lightning rods and started him off on the road to The Town. 



28 REST AND APPETITE. 

When the wagon touched the cobble stones on Orange 
street, he was awakened by the Jar. He could not under- 
stand what it all meant. Afterwards, when the real facts 
of the case illuminated his inner consciousness, he told 
Captain Joe Clapp that he had never been so abused in all 
his philanthropic labors as he had been at 'Sconset ; and 
further, that the lightning might strike every blanked 
house in the village before he would make an effort to save 
a shingle. 

But the most extraordinary fact I have yet to relate. A 
Is^y in Worcester, was sent by her husband to Captain 
Baxter to be conveyed to 'Sconset for a season of rest and 
quiet which her health greatly needed. Too much fatigued 
to write of her safe arrival the first day, she waited until 
the second, when, having addressed the envelope, she 
started for the post oflace. As she was about to put the 
letter in the box, she was overcome by drowsiness and in 
the confusion of ideas which followed, she dropped herself 
in the box, instead of the letter, and the next moment was 
fast asleep, and she didn't discover her mistake until three 
hours later when she found herself delivered ! So much 
for the effect of air in producing sleep. 

But stranger stories are told of the results to the human 
appetite. It is not alone that groceries, provisions and 
meats are in good variety and quality, and fish fresh 
caught within sight of visitors, and poultry, eggs, milk and 
V ^getables grown upon farms adjacent to the village are 
placed on the table before them. The tonic properties of the 
the air increase desire for food and facilitate digestion. A 
New York auctioneer whose reputation for high morality 
is phenomenal, stated to me his experience. He arrived on 
The Bank after suffering for a year from nervous prostra- 
tion caused by excessive indulgence in the truth at 
sales, and, during which time, he bad had but little sleep 



30 BEST AND APPETITE. 

and only the memory of an appetite. He took a little cot- 
tage for the season where he and his family felt that, at least, 
they could have,rest and quiet. The first week's experience 
was promising. He was able to run the gamut of the bill 
of fare of the Ocean View House, and thenceforward he 
got around three square meals a day, and he never flinched 
until he had sucessf ully wrestled with every dish the pro- 
prietor dared to present for his discussion. Between meals, 
he foraged for something to stem the resistless tide of ap- 
petite. A waitress was assigned to serve him at the table. 
She returned to Boston before the season was half through. 
The next week her funeral was largely attended. Another 
stood it out tQ the end of the season. Her muscles became 
so strengthened and toughened by the amount of travel 
necessary to satisfy the cravings of the monstrous appetite 
of that auctioneer that, on her return to the city, she en- 
tered the lists for a six day's walking match, go-as-you- 
please, and carried off the stakes and half the gate money. 
But with the landlord, the patronage of that man was a 
matter of serious concern if not of grave solemnity. Day 
after day he saw his stock of provisions disappear in the 
omnivorous maw of the seemingly starving man and he 
was sick at heart as the season's profits slowly diminished 
under the withering influence of his hunger. Still the 
landlord accepted the inevitable with the calmness that 
men exhibit in the sight of death. The time came when 
they had to part. The scene was one never to be forgot- 
ten. In solemn and regretful tones the boarder broke the 
intelligence. He told his host that another year he should 
return. The landlord heaved a sigh. But when the guest 
added that he intended to keep house, the face of the host 
lightened. He grasped the hand of the guest and with 
visible emotion tremblingly told him that he was his friend 
for life. Little did he appreciate that auctioneer as a 



A SADDENED liANDLOED. 31 

living, moving, breathing, example of the excellence of his 
table. The thought uppermost in his mind was that, 
another year, he should perhaps retrieve the losses the 
ravenous appetite of the boarder had entailed upon him 
during that. It is pleasant to see such exhibitions of ten- 
der sentiment in a world in which ingratitude is so often 
shown. 

A few days after the landlord told a friend, in the strict- 
est confidence, that it was bad enough to have a boarder 
die under his roof, but it was even pleasant, as compared 
with having some people live under it. He didn't mention 
any names, but the gentleman to whom it was told caught 
on to the signifigance of the statement the moment it was 
made. He didn't want any more of that style of invalids. 



LIFE ON THE BANK. 

The meaning of the word cottage in society is strangely 
perverted. It is defined in the dictionaries to be "a small 
habitation ; a cot ; a hut ; formerly limited to a poor or 
shabby habitation, but now applied also to any neat or 
tasteful dwelling." As currently understood the word may 
be used with respect to a dwelling three stories in height, 
with an attic and projecting windows, and with a veranda 
capable of sitting three score people in comfort. Within 
there may be twenty spacious apartments and wide hall- 
ways and balustrades, richly upholstered furniture, and 
plastered walls hung with fine paper, or even frescoed and 
covered with works of art to make a still wider departure 
from the simplicity of the structure which the name would 
indicate. If it were within a small interior city or thriving 
village, or were in the suburbs of a large city and occupied 
t>y a prosperous or wealthy citizen, it would be called a 
mansion. Translated to the seaside it becomes a "cottage" 
even though it may have cost, with its appointments, from 
$20,000 to $50,000. 

Life within it brings all the cares and responsibilities 
upon the wife that exist in an urban home. The primary 
object of removing to it is to secure rest, and quiet, and 
freedom from care. The very size of thef building of itself 



EEAL COTTAGES. 33 

defeats the purpose. The cares of a family in different 
houses, furnished in equal style, can be accuratelj'^ com- 
puted by a comparison of their cubic capacity. A dwelling 
containing 30,000 cubic feet will entail upon the occupant, 
five times the amount of responsibility and labor, of a 
structure containing 6,000 cubic feet. Besides, a large 
house invites the visits of traveling friends at a season 
when, perhaps, their presence is felt to be little less than 
an intrusion, although they would be welcome at other 
times and under different circumstances. In a cottage in 
reality, social calls replace protracted visits and then they 
are made less frequent than they would be were the com- 
pliment paid to the family in more pretentious quarters, 
and the object of the summer's emigration is realized. 
Otherwise the only benefit resulting is that^which proceeds 
from a change of air and surroundings. In the one case 
there is real cottage life ; in the other it is fashionable life 
with all its cares carried to the shore. 

But there is another feature. When comforts are as- 
sured, the enjoyments of life are hightened by change. 
From elegant appointments and surroundings and bewilder- 
ing space, one finds pleasure in snugness and simplicity. 
Elaborate dinners in course, are gladly dispensed with to 
enjoy wholesome food that savors of freshness and needs 
no relish to quicken the appetite. 

In the little houses on 'Sconset Bank all these advan- 
tages proceeding from a transition from life in a city 
home are realized, change of air, quiet, rest, and contrast, 
with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of care. They 
are real cottages. They were built strongly and compactly 
to resist the elements and afford shelter and comfort for 
the occupants, and with no thought that they would ever 
be in demand as the residences of summer visitors. Year 
after year they have been and are still occupied by the 



34: lilFE ON THE BANK. 

families of strangers who have found pleasure In them id st 
of homely surroundings presenting a sharp contrast with 
their homes during nine months of tlie year. 

Their appreciation of cottage life finds expression in the 
names they bestow upon their little homes, which are 
painted upon strips of board and nailed over the portals. 
Some are changed from year to year with the change of 
tenants; others remain for successive seasons. "Dew 
Deop Inn" seemed to invite the thirsty passer to cross the 
threshold of the six feet doorway. It was a holiow mockery. 
The hostess had not an inn-keeper's license. The sign did 
not deceive anybody. "N'Yum N'Yum Hut'.' suggested the 
serene satisfaction of the inmates over a 'Sconset break- 
fast, responding to the demands of an appetite sharpened 
by the ocean air. "Wannackmamack Lodge" tempts 
strangers to risk the rupture of the buccinnator muscle in 
the vain attempt to pronounce the name. "Okoewaw Wig- 
wam" was occupied by a white tribe from Boston. They 
were peaceably disposed savages and I never, in passing, 
experienced a sense of danger to life or limb. Neither ' 'big 
injun," nor squaw, nor papoose, sought my scalp. "Cas- 
tle Bandbox" was the home of some merry young girls 
from Washington. And didn't they laugh as they played 
housekeeping all alone by themselves? In "Bird's Nest 
Cottage" were nestled the little ones under the care of a 
loving mother. In "Sanit as Felicitas" was ensconced the 
family of a Providence gentleman. A genial old shipmaster, 
long in the shady side of life, recalling memories of youth, 
named his little home "Sunny Side," where he and the 
charming companion of his declining years extended to 
their friends a welcome. "Baknaby Lodge" was the ely- 
sium of some Philadelphia ladies who sought out 'Sconset 
on the map and came thither to pass their vacation. "Le 
Chalet" was over the door of the cottage of two charming 



COTTAGE NOMENCIiATURE. 35 

French ladies, from New York who spent their summers 
on The Bank. "Sans Souci" tells of careless ease that a 
Rhode Island family enjoy in their little summer home. 
"MuLTi IN Parvo" describes the marvelous capacity of a 
little house in which a distinguished NewYork clergyman 
and his family found comfort for the Season. ' 'Svaegaloka" 
the Sanskrit paradise, is over the portals of one dwelling, 
while "Paradise" in the vernacular, describes the peace 
that exists in another. "Nautican Lodge" preserves 
another Indian name. "Utopia" describes the ideal life 
led by a bright family from Medford in an old structure 
that has not been shingled for perhaps a couple of genera- 
tions. "Heart's Ease" is equally suggestive of a 
peace of mind that dwelleth within the shingled sides. 
"Close Quarters" concisely states the character of the ac- 
commodations in another house. "Kansas Dugout" is 
descriptive of the rudimentary dwelling in which a family 
from Achison dwell. "The Parsonage" has not within the 
memory of man been occupied by a parson, though one 
could get solid comfort under its roof. Some jolly young 
men told how close they were compelled to live when they 
painted on a shingle the words "Spoon Fashion" and 
nailed it over the door. "K. K." bothered strangers and 
residents alike until the inmates explained that the letters 
were the initials of "Kauphin Kottage." An orthodox 
quaker from western New York, in violation of the spirit, 
if not the letter of the discipline displayed over his door 
words of worldly import borrowed from the language of 
song at that, "Dolce far niente." "The Sardine Box" 
needs no explanation. But perhaps cottage life is nowhere 
better and more concisely stated than appears over the 
door of an old house. 

"The Anchorage, 
♦'Give me my scollop shell of quiet." 






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in 


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11- 


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A'U : 


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fijMfl 


c 



MEN AT A PREMIUM. 37 

The resident visitors are largel}^ women and children. 
Men are a scarce commodity. If married women want for 
a time to be rid of their husbands, as they sometimes do, 
'Sconset is the place to go to. The success of single women 
in getting them is not so marked. The Bank is not a 
matrimonial exchange. At no time are there men enough 
to go around. The place is too far distant from our com- 
mercial cities to admit of frequent visits or protracted 
stays by husbands and marriageable men whom the exigen- 
cies of business require elsewhere. At the beginning of 
the season there is a redundancy of skirts and a corres- 
ponding scarcity of bifurcated garments seen moving along 
the narrow streets and on the beach. In June and July, 
men come in units and twos and threes. Later they may 
appear in tens with occasional visitations in scores ; but 
at no time is there even an approximate balance between 
the sexes. A man is appreciated. If he is not at a premium, 
he is at least quoted at par. He who is at a discount in 
social circles at home, when on The Bank is received for 
all he is worth and sometimes for a little more. He feels 
his importance. He may attribute his success to his manly 
graces suddenly developed by inhaling the air of the ocean. 
The thought that it is the result of the inexorable laws of 
supply and demand is a painful reflection. Come to it he 
does at last, and he realizes that, on his return, he must, 
in the iield of every day social intercourse, sink to his nor- 
mal level in the estimation of women. Still it is a satisfac- 
tion to reflect that one has been so far "bulled" on the 
social exchange, as to have been regarded even for a season 
as a fancy security. 

At the hops, which the hotel proprietors give at differ- 
ent periods during the season for the young people, the 
anthropophagous being who can dance is above par. He 
is even a bonanza. He can have his pick of partners. The 



38 LIFE ON THE BANK. 

callow youth is ruthlessly dragged from the care of his 
mother, and the vigorous man of middle age is beset by a 
female press gang deaf to all entreaty. Anything short of 
the possession of a cork leg, or a timber toe, or the affi- 
davits of two disinterested and reputable persons that, to 
their knowledge, he does not know how to dance will ex- 
cuse him from active service. If he can move through the 
figures, even awkwardly, he will pass muster. If he cannot 
dance he can make believe and by his self-sacrificing 
efforts afford an opportunity for somebody else to dance. 

And dancing on The Bank carries with it all that the 
word implies. The Nantucket youths and maidens set an 
example of lively movement that becomes contagious. 
They mean to get their money's worth at every hazard. At 
'Sconset, dancing is not a mincing, gliding, sauntering 
through the figures in languid movement, like unto the 
halting walk of a convalescent kitten trying to conform her 
steps to the cadences of a jews harp in the mouth of an 
American small boy. Its significance is life and activity 
as the outward expression of the inward buoyancy of 
youthful spirit, breathing the atmosphere of freedom 
within the sound of music, which the French philosopher 
Fourier, fitly called "a measured harmony." 

I have often been present on these occasions. But I am 
in the sere and yellow leaf. Those pleasures are not re- 
served for me. Still, as I have looked on the enlivening 
scene, I have felt the fires of youth coursing through the 
arteries of my ancient legs, and one by one the wrinkles 
depart therefrom as if they had received a gentle hint that 
their room was better than their company. But corns, and 
bunions, and chilblains, and gout, and rheumatic deposits 
in the joints, and atrophy of muscular tissue and depleted 
nerve force, and the vis inertia generally which inhereth to 
him with one foot in the grave, forbade. Without envy did I 



A NATATORY EXPERT. 39 

keep my seat in a retired corner of the hall, glad that I 
could look down upon legs that had a creditable record 
and think of myself as one of the great company of the 
"Honorable Has Beens," whose ranks are yearly decimated 
by the Great Destroyer, but are as rapidly recruited from 
veterans retiring from service. 

But water is more dense than air. If too weak to stand 
the continued strain of dancing, in the denser element I 
can sustain my avoirdupois. Buffeting in the surf gives 
me a new lease of life. The waves at 'Sconset braeli 
seems to me like surging waters of perpetual youth. In 
them, I fear neither dashing billows nor receding under- 
tow. My endurance has been tested on more than one 
occasion. My fame as a swimmer is Bank wide. The im- 
portunities that press upon me to teach others the art are 
numerous. It is the ambition of every lady who visits the 
seaside to be able to swim. It matters not that she may 
be worth a million ; or that she has reached high on the 
ladder of fame in creative art ; or that she has become an 
acknowledged leader of human thought. All that is nothing 
compared with the rapturous reflection that she can do 
something which few or none of her lady friends can. 

I met with a marvelous success as a professor. I did 
not make much money out of it but I had lots of fun. But 
my professional carieer was brought to an abrupt termina- 
tion. There are some things in the life of even an aquatic 
expert engaged in imparting his skill to ladies that are not 
altogether ecstatic. Among my most promising pupils 
were some young girls from Baltimore, who had registered 
a vow that they would never get married, even under the 
most severe provocation, until they had become so expert 
in the waters that they could duck their husbands in case 
exemplary punishment for any minor wickedness was 
needed. They were under my tutelage for several days. 







f 



TOO SUSCEPTIBLE. 41 

It was wonderful what a cargo of confidence they carried 
in my abilities as a teacher and the accuracy of my judg- 
ment in keeping them just on the dividing line between 
danger and safety which enhances the pleasure of being in 
the waves. 

One morning I took one of my sea nympiis beyond the 
Ime of breakers and set her to floating, taking care to walk 
close by her in shore, so that in case of fright, I could 
assist her in. She lay as lightly on the waters as a cork. I 
could not resist the impulse which bade me tell her that 
she was beautiful to my admiring gaze. I had hardly paid 
tl^is tribute to her loveliness when she asked me to add to 
the charm of the picture by floating at her side. This was 
too much. If there is any man short of a centenarian who 
can be insensible to such a compliment, set him down as 
a muff; advise him to get an engagement in a theater 
where a real corpse is wanted to enliven the play, and then 
take a dose of ratsbane that he may be ready to fulfill the 
engagement. I am not that sort of a man, If I have not 
carried juvenescence into old age, at least, I have periods 
when, spanning near three quarters of a century I seem 
to have been borne back into the Spring time of life 
Such words from a beautiful girl made me feel as if I was 
floating in the empyrean instead of being tumbled about 
by the surging waves off 'Sconset beach, which spare 
neither age, sex, nor previous condition of matrimonial 
servitude. I acceded to the suggestion. In a moment 
hand in hand together. May and December, in sweet prox- 
imity, were borne upon the bounding billows. No small 
boy on Christmas morning, with vision greeted by a 
mouth harmonicon, a Noah's ark, a wheelbarrow, a peg 
top, a follow ball, and a pair of skates, and above all, a 
paw, hammer and nails and a room full of furniture at hand 
inviting his early attention, could have felt more happy. 



42 LIFE ON THE BANK. 

While bathing in what became a sea of delight, I asked her 
to recline her face on my manly breast. Though I didn't 
mean it, she said she would. The thought intensified the 
rapture of my situation, I became oblivious to the fact 
that a thundering big billow was coming towards us. Now, 
whether my fair water nymph had not been correctly 
taught in the anatomy and physiology class at school, or 
whether her ideas had become a little mixed, I don't 
know. At any rate, in the effort to comply with my sug- 
gestion, just as the wave broke upon us, she had evidently 
got the idea that my breast was located below the dia- 
phragm ; for driven forward by the charging breaker s-he 
planted her head against my abdominal belt with the force 
of a catapult. Quicker than the lightning calculator could 
count half, I doubled up like the closing of a ponderous jack- 
knife, and in that ungraceful attitude turned seven summer- 
saults out of a possible eight, before I felt myself stranded 
upon the beach, sneezing in a wild paroxysm as a mark of i 
disapprobation of the practical joke the boisterous Sea 
King had played upon me when I was reveling in the de- 
lights of a briny paradise. And not only that, but my ears ; 
and nose ; and mouth ; and stomach contained sand enough 
to fill a contract for plastering a country meeting house. 
Above all I became conscious of an acute costaritis (belly 
ache it is generally called, but I prefer the technical term 
because it gives dignity to the malady), that caused me to 
twist into contortions whereof the india-rubber man had 
never dreamed. The first thing I saw and heard when I 
looked around was that delightful minx, who had been 
safely borne to the beach on the crest of the breaker that 
had so engulfed me, saying, "Oh isn't it fun?" Fun? O 
Lord! O Lord! But I concealed my emotions, though it' 
was with a desperate struggle ; and I laughed with all the: 
vivacity of a congregation of ghosts holding high carnivall 



I 



TURNING OVER A NEW LEAP. 43 

ill the midst of a November fog in a secluded graveyard at 
midnight. 

My manly breast has not been vouchsafed since that 
eventful morning to pillow the head of any damsel on sea 
or shore, for reasons that are entirely satisfactory to my- 
self, and which nobody has any business to inquire about. 
The pursuit of knowledge is sometimes, even with well 
meaning people, carried to an unreasonable point. In 
such instances, a proper self respect demands that it be 
discouraged. I may state, however, that, on retiring to 
rest that night, she, with whom I pull in matrimonial 
harness, convinced me that the breast I so generously had 
tendered to another was held by her as a life-tenant under 
a contract that was irrevocable, and that she had never 
authorized me to let it either for a term, at a fixed rental, 
or an occupancy at pleasure by another to the exclusion of 
her rights in the premises. Above all, she objected to a 
joint-tenancy or a tenancy in common. I had never looked 
at the legal aspects of the matter before ; and without going 
to the office of 'Squire Coffin, in The Town, to look at the 
authorities, I made up my mind before breakfast that, per- 
haps, I had better acquiesce in her view of the law. 



PERILS. 

There are dangers which may beset the bather on the 
beach and for which the billows are not responsible. Max 
Wattigan came to The Bank at my special invitation to 
pass the season. He is a friend of mine in the soap and 
tallow line. A mischance made him the principal figure 
in an episode, the recollections of which, in his mind, are 
equal to the horrors of a dozen nightmares. At the sea- 
side his passion is bathing "in the buff" a similitude 
employed by naughty boys to express the idea of the 
uniform seen in the Garden of Eden before the fashion of 
wearing fig leaves had been introduced from Paris, as the 
rudimentary promise of texile fabrics, which to-day are 
typical of our advanced civilization. The appearance in 
'Sconset waters without a bathing dress between the 
hours of 6 A. M. and 8 P. M. is prohibited by an ordinance 
passed long since by the common council. (See ordinances 
of Siasconset, 1793, chapter 234, Atheneum library.) 

Max is an early riser. With the crowing of Captain 
Aldridge's patriarchal rooster he went forth to the bath 
house, divested himself of his raiment, plunged into the 
surf, and, for the nonce, was oblivious of the presence of 
hungry blue fish which, in playful mood, might snap at his 



46 PEEILS. 

inviting nose, bite his dexter digits, or feed on his sinis- 
ter toes. After a half hour's enjoyment he went to his 
breakfast with a stomach stimulated to digest anything 
offered, from a broiled belaying pin to a book agent's con- 
science roasted and garnished with shingle nails. 

During the season there was a lady, an amateur artist, 
whose ambition was to reproduce the brilliant effects of a 
sunrise from the sea. For several mornings after her 
arrival she was disappointed. Fog, and rain, and massive 
clouds intervened to obscure the view which was to be her 
soul's delight. Of the existence of the lady, and much 
more the object of her artistic ambition. Max was in ignor- 
ance, or their painful meeting would never have occurred. 
One morning she looked forth from her window and saw 
that the appointed time had come. The sunlight was 
reddening the edges of the clouds that floated above the 
eastern horizon. While she was hastily preparing to cap- 
ture the coming sunrise, Max was already laving in the 
refreshing waters. Now, charging against an angry billow 
as it approached in threatening array, then plunging under 
a surging breaker, and next floating as lightly as an ostrich 
plume over the wave crest and sinking into the watery 
furrow only to rise again, thus was he the sport of the 
dancing billows until he should assert his strength, and 
resisting their force, should in triumph make his way to 
the beach. 

It was while he was thus sporting amid the breakers 
that he glanced up toward the land and saw a female 
figure moving hurriedly down The Bank in the direction of 
where he was. Her eyes were fixed upon the delicate 
fringe of crimson and gold that made the buoyant clouds 
before her a scene of enchantment, the recollection of 
which would be to her a source of perpetual pleasure. He 
quickly left for shore and concealed himseK behind a 



I 



A DELICATE SITUATION. 47 

dory, thinking that her approach meant only a morning 
walk on the beach whence she would soon depart. To his 
dismay, she produced a camp stool and planted it within 
fifty feet of where he was hidden from her view, and in a 
line between him and the bath house wherein his clothes 
were suspended. She opened her color box and com- 
menced to wash in masses of warm tints which made the 
floating vapors, now rich in aureate beauty, the precursor 
of the gorgeous sunburst that was sure to follow. From 
around the dory Max stole brief glances at the poetic 
spinster and took in the startling novelty of his situation. 
Little by little he comprehended its full significance. He 
was on the windward side of the boat, and the morning 
breezes soon sent a cold chill through his frame. With 
his back to the north, lumbago ; or acute Bright's disease ; 
or inflammatory rheumatism was a contingent result. To 
turn his face threatened pneumonia ; or peritonitis ; or 
even quick consumption. He waited in the hope that, 
with dextrous skill, she would quickly lay in the colors, 
and then, hearing the distant echoes of hunger resounding 
from the walls of an empty stomach, would find the ardor 
of artistic enthusiasm chilled by the reflection that woman 
was not made alone for the ideal, however grand. He 
mistook the character of the one before him. She seemed 
glued to the camp stool, and the seat itself was evidently 
anchored to the beach. At last the appalling fact was un- 
folded to his mind that he was a naked descendant of 
Adam, imprisoned out of doors by a Turner in petticoats, 
inspired by a too lofty regard for high art to allow a detail 
to escape her in so rich a display of nature's wondrous 
grouping of the beautiful. 

Brighter and brighter the rays of light shot above the 
cloud masses until the mighty Monarch of Day himself 
burst upon her vision in all his warmth and effulgence and 



AAONt. 49 

throw upon the waves a field of dazzling sheen, that made 
the waters look like moving ripples of molten gold. The 
wind was stiffening from the northeast, and cold chills 
were sent through brain, and spinal column, and muscle, 
and bone. In the agony of his situation, the mercury 
seemed to have fallen to near the freezing point. It became 
apparent that he must disclose his presence or else his 
stiffened corpse be viewed by an unsympathizing magis- 
trate, to whom, by the statutes of Massachuetts, had been 
confided the holding of inquests to ascertain the cause of 
death. Raising himself so that his head and shoulders 
appeared above the gunwale of the boat, he said in a most 
mild and apologetic tone "Madam, I beg pardon, but" — He 
got no further. His words were interrupted by a shriek. 
Then, as if a mine had exploded under her, she made a 
spring heavenwards. Camp stool; and brushes; and 
water cup ; and color box ; and the aggregate parapher- 
nalia of a boss artist were scattered upon the sand, and 
the frightened owner was flying towards The Bank with 
skirts disordered and fluttering wildly in the morning 
breezes. And it was not until she had disappeared around 
one of the cottages on The Bank that Max ran for the bath 
house as if the devil was after him. Having quickly 
resumed his clothing, he sneaked into the hotel, changed 
his suit for another entirely different in appearance and 
came into breakfast, yawning as if he had been disturbed 
in his rest by a late nocturnal banquet in which hard boiled 
eggs ; and lobster salad ; and pickled pigs feet ; and strong 
coffee had been the principal constituents of the bill of 
fare. 

At noon time, Max sauntered over the beach in the 
locality which had been the scene of this distressing 
episode. His face wore an air of meditation that was akin 
to sadness. His eyes caught sight of a piece of shining 



50 



tfiJlttiS. 



metal that shone brightly from the surrounding sand. 
A nearer view disclosed the fact that it was a lady's— well, 
something of a suspensory character that is used to 
keep the garments that cover the lower extremities up in 
pla<5e. He was about to pick it up, when the thought of 
her, who was the probable proprietor, crossed his mind. 
Sadly he turned his face away and left the appurtenance 
where it was, not wishing to preserve what might be a 
memento of an experience fraught with so many unpleas- 
ant recollections. 



CAPTAIN BAXTER. 

But a still greater peril awaits the unsuspecting visitor. 
Captain William Baxter is neither a pirate, nor an insurance 
agent, nor a bank president nor a cashier. It were better for 
tbf> victims of his insidious wiles that he were, for then 
they could protect themselves with horse pistols, or cut- 
lasses, or Gatling guns. His misdeeds are neither crimes 
nor misdemeanors to be proceeded against by indictment ; 
nor are they torts for which a civil action for damages can 
be maintained. They are without malice, except in a 
Pickwickian sense. But mercy is no part of his moral 
composition. Nurseling and centenarian; parent and 
child ; husband and wife ; lover and mistress ; townsman 
and stranger are alike the objects of his relentless jokes. 
Neither devotee nor unbeliever; professional man nor 
layman is spared. Day and night, winter and summer, 
spring and autumn his victims, not once, but a half a dozen 
times suffer before they learn to be on the alert. With him 
youthful spirits are still manifested in advanced age. His 
heart is as full of generous impulse, his spirits as light, his 
vivacity as marked and his appreciation of fun as keen at 
80 as they were at 18. 

William Baxter was born in 1805, on Nantucket. His 
father was a whaling captain. As a matter of course, the 



52 CAPTAIN BAXTER. 

son was bred to the sea. When he retired from service he 
was the master of a whaling ship. He has been all over the 
world. During intermittent illuminations of truth he will 
recount interesting episodes drawn from his own experi- 
ence and some of which are even pathetic. Yet, before 
the conclusion of the conversation, with features demure 
and solemn he will regale one with a story to make the 
blood curdle, only to find at its termination in one's sale 
and delivery in the perpetration of a preposterous joke. 
When the Captain left the waters he settled down in Nan- 
tucket. Like other men in The Town he was a frequent 
visitor to Siasconset, in the spring and fall, during the fishing 
season. Then, at night, the old captains after returning 
with their dories to the land would sit down in the room 
of some little cottage and swap lies in the most fraternal 
manner in recounting experiences in the past. On such 
occasions bigger sperm whales have been caught in Cap- 
tain Brown Gardner's cottage than were ever struck in the 
Arctic seas. Captain Baxter's visits to The Bank were 
frequent, and at times they occurred every day. If any- 
body wanted to ride with him he was welcome. If he was 
able to pay for the accommodation, very well. If not, it 
didn't make any difference. The enterprise was organized 
upon principles as broad as humanity and good fellowship. 
He gave the needed wayfarer a ride, stuffed him with in- 
credible stories in transitu, and if he was not satisfied 
with that he stuffed him with a dinner on his arrival at 
'Sconset. He was everybody's friend when a favor was to 
be granted, but everybody's ruthless enemy when the op- 
portunity occurred to play a joke. 

And so it came to pass that, whenever he went to or 
came from Town he carried or brought letters and was 
entrusted with errands to attend to. At last his coming 
and going became such a matter of importance that his 



THE LOCAIi EXPRESS. 53 

failure to appear was sometimes the cause of inconvenience. 
At length what was begun as an incidental matter in the 
spirit of good nature, became a regular employment. It 
was the evolution of an unincorporated stage, express, 
and postal company, and Captain Baxter was president, 
director, stockholder, superintendent, agent, messenger, 
teamster, hostler — everything, except the propelling power 
of the wagon, which, to the surprise of everybody on The 
Bank he allowed the horses to furnish. And when Sias- 
conset became a seaside resort, the means of transit of the 
island already existed. He received the passengers at the 
steamboat landing and carried them to their destination, 
often in the hight of the season making two round trips a 
day, covering an aggregate distance of 30 miles. His 
vehicle was a Nantucket box wagon, one of the few on the 
island requiring a double team. A cover was put on to 
afford protection in case of inclement weather. As it was 
slowly dragge'd through the deep ruts of the sandy roads it 
became at last to be known as the "Swiftsure" and the 
line as the "Lightning Express." But such arduous work 
as this, with its care and responsibility, did not tame the 
spirits of the old mariner. Fresh or tired he was always 
ready for a joke and could take as well as give. 

When I took my departure for 'Sconset I was told to 
inquire for Captain Baxter when I reached the steamboat 
wharf at Nantucket, to trust to him for guidance, and that 
he would pilot me safely over the island. It was impressed 
upon me that he was serious and even solemn in his de- 
meanor, and was especially sensitive to anything like 
levity or frivolity. There is an unsettled account between 
me and the man who told me that, which at the day of 
judgment will not be sponged from the slate. Thus far 
he has eluded my pursuit. I am going for his scalp and 
will have it, if I have to follow him to the gates of the New 



AN UNPLEASANT PBOSPECT. 55 

Jerusalem. He knew what he was up to when he remorse- 
lessly put me into Captain Baxter's care. He had been 
there himself. 

At the steamer's wharf I inquired for Baxter. He was 
pointed out. I approached him and was greeted with a 
saintly smile. I told him who I was and that I desired to 
go to Siasconset. He put his hand to his ear, acoustic 
fashion, and said that he was very^hard of hearing. I re- 
peated in a higher tone of voice. He replied that he had 
just shipped to a friend of his in Boston the last quintal 
he had, except what he wanted for his own use that very 
morning, but he would see if he could get some from some- 
body on The Bank. I put my mouth close to his ear and 
yelled the statement I had made. He seemed to get a 
grip on my idea for he led myself and party to his wagon, 
took out the tail board, helped us in, and just before night- 
fall we started on our trip. Hardly had we got beyond 
the edge of The Town when he told us of the dangers the 
journey involved. But he said we need have no uneasi- 
ness, as he felt confident he should land us in Siasconset 
in safety long before morning. As an all night trip amid 
darkness and fog, was not exactly the circus for which I 
had bought a ticket, with painful effort I screamed one 
question after another at him to obtain an explanation. As 
the result I was gradually enlightened. In substance the 
information I received was that the crossing of an inter- 
vening range of mountains, and especially the peril in fol- 
lowing the shelving road that wound around the crest of 
Half Way Hill, was beset with dangers, for in the darkness 
of the night, it (almost invited destruction; as a variation 
of a few inches in the course might precipitate the craft in 
which our hopes embarked, down a steep declivity perhaps 
hundreds of feet into a yawning chasm, and it might be, 
impale our bodies on the sharp branches of gigantic pines 



56 CAtTAri^ BAttEtl. 

which for centuries had been pushing their cones lieaven- 
ward, but had never yet caught the rays of the sun, even 
at meridian. And he told me about the passage through 
a deep canyon beyond Bean Hill following a tortuous 
course amid titanic bowlders which, in the pliocene period 
of geological history had been brought down by mighty aval- 
anches from the towering peaks above ; and that he never 
went through it without thoughts of fear and trembling. 
He told me of disasters that had occurred. With impres- 
sive solemnity of manner he recounted times, places and 
circumstances. One I especially remember, because of 
the appalling details of the catastrophy. Captain Obed 
Bunker had started one morning from Quidnit with a box- 
cart, freighted with a peck basket of eggs, three quintals 
of codfish and 250 pounds of new potatoes, and at a place 
two points off the starboard bow of our wagon, in the 
position in which we were, his cart gave a lurch and she 
sheered off N. N. E. by E. half E. when the true course by 
the chart was S. E. by S., and that too when Captain 
Bunker, on starting in the morning, had only taken the 
regulation rations of Medford rum. After stating these 
horrors. Captain Baxter told me not to be afraid, that such 
disasters were now infrequent and that many a time he 
had gone through that chasm in the shadow of a storm 
cloud when, amid the gloom, an American citizen of full 
African descent, in the active pursuit of a black cat in 
mourning for her drowned progeny, through the labyrinths 
of a sub-cellar at midnight, in a thunder storm, would 
present a picture which, in comparison, would be of daz- 
zling whiteness. Even this statement was anything but 
reassuring, and I didn't recover from the sense of danger 
until I reached the hotel tired from apprehension and 
iioarse from bawling into Captain Baxter's ears. 
Awakened by the breakfast bell of the Ocean View House 



FOEGIVEN BUT NOT FOKGOTTEN. 57 

the next morning, I arose. I looked out of the window to 
the west, heavenwards, thinking as the least reward for 
the dangers I had risked, my vision would be greeted by a 
picturesque mountain landscape. My sight followed from 
the firmament until it reached the horizon on an almost 
barren hill a couple of miles distant and perhaps 75 feet 
above the level of the sea. To such contemptible proportions 
had the mountains, pictured to my imagination, shrunk. 
Before me was a sandy roadway which extended as far as 
the eye could reach, with parallel ruts worn perhaps fifteen 
to eighteen inches deep into the light soil by the wheels of 
the vehicles, and the feet of the horses in travelling over 
the island. These were the yawning chasms and the fear- 
ful abysses, the vivid description of which had excited 
terror in my breast. Some stunted growths of scrub pine 
that, against heavy odds, were struggling against the pre- 
sumption of bush-hood in the effort to attain the dignity 
of trees, were all there was to support the monstrous 
stories of th« giants of the forest, which I had heard the 
night before. 

I was not long in seeking out the betrayer of my trust 
and confidence. That he might not be misled by his in- 
firmity of hearing into a misunderstanding of my meaning, I 
screamed into his ear that he was an ancient fraud with all 
the modern improvements. He told me not to strain my 
voice, as he had already recovered from his deafness by 
the use of hot applications of red pepper on his diaphragm 
the night before, and that now he could hear me if I spoke 
in a whisper. Well, I was furious ! But he laughed in 
such a genial manner that my wrath was turned away. He 
said he had no hard feelings against me ! From what fol- 
lowed I know his words were not uttered in mockery. He 
quietly beckoned me into the "warf of his little house, 
wherein he produced an antique basket and drcAv there- 



^^ CAPTAIN BAXTEK. 

from a prehistoric bottle. By a natural sequence of events 
the cork came out and he passed the bottle and asked me 
to take a swig. He said it was old Medford, vintage of 
1816. Anybody who tries it will believe, as I did. In that 
mellow, heart warming draught was buried every vestige of 
the animosity that I had felt for that veteran of the sea. ^And 
yet, within a week, he had effected a second sale of my person 
Again and again, it has occurred and, until I shall cross 
the Stygian waters, I shall never be free from Captain 
Baxter s jokes and even then he will play them upon my 
heirs, executors, administrators and assigns. 



THE EVOLUTION OF A POST OFFICE, 

It took nearly two centuries to lift Siasconset ,to the 
dignity of a post village. The government allowed it to 
take care of itself. If that community is best governed 
which is governed the least, The Bank was the nearest ap- 
proach to perfection in its political status. The only post 
office on the island was at Nantucket, and letters for 'Scon- 
set were given to any resident, who came for them, or 
to anybody whom the postmaster happened to learn was 
going out. Correspondence was not heavy, and there was 
not an overweening anxiety on the part of the residents 
to read the reports of the stock market at the breakfast 
table. They had stock in The Bank in which every man 
was a shareholder and director, with neither president nor 
cashier to influence fear of defalcation or embezzlement. 
From it they received semi-annual dividends in fish, vary- 
ing in amount with the humor of the clerk of the weather 
and the disposition of the cod to bite. So the people at 'Scon- 
set were born; they grew, and married, and had children, 
and generation after generation never knew the luxury of 
government officers living among them. 

As already stated, Captain Baxter, by general consent, 
had come to be entrusted as common carrier with the 
duty of bringing and taking the mails between 'Sconset 



60 i) THE EVOLUTION OP A POST OFFICE. 

and The Town on his jaunts. At last it became a regular 
thing and gradually the inner consciousness of the residents 
were illuminated with the idea that he should be paid for his 
services. He was accorded one whole cent for each letter or 
paper carried in either direction. For an errand five cents 
was paid as his reward and a larger sum for the transpor- 
tation of packages, according to size. 

When, in the course of time, the village became the 
resort for summer visitors, there was a necessity for a 
place to receive and deliver mail matter, and the Captain's 
quaint old house became the depot. Strangers inquired 
for the post-office, and they were given the direction with 
a description of the house. But as the same description 
would apply to nearly every house on The Bank, it was 
often of no assistance, and perhaps two or three houses 
would be visited before the incipient post office was 
reached. To remedy this difficulty, the Captain, in clear 
violation of the statute in such case made and provided, 
had the words * 'Post Office" painted on a shingle and nailed 
over his door. There was a thundering excitement in 
Washington when it was reported that, at Siasconset, some- 
body had dared thus to boldly defy the law ! Correspond- 
ence was at once opened between the Post office depart- 
ment and the Superintendent of the Mail Service, in the 
Eastern Division, which was continued for several weeks. 
Concisely stated the imperative inqury of the Post office 
Department was "Why ,is' this thus?" The Superintendent 
of Mail Service, Eastern Division, replied in substance 
"I'm busted if I know." Communication was opened with 
the United States District Attorney for the District of 
Massachusetts, and three weeks were passed in writing 
and receiving letters to and from that legal functionary. 
Then the District Attorney began a correspondence with 
the United States Marshal of the District of Massachusetts. 



RED TAPE. 61 

A fortnight was passed in exchange of notes before it was 
finally determined that a deputy marshal of the United 
States should be dispatched to the island to learn and 
report the facts. At last the marshal took his departure. 
In him, the Government, for the time being, lived and 
moved and had its being, from the moment he left Wood's 
Hole on that eventful journey. He felt the importance of 
his mission and was determined to perform it conscien- 
tiously and without fear or favor. It was with these feel- 
ings that the Government left the steamer on its arrival 
at the wharf at Nantucket. As luck would have it the first 
man he met was Captain Baxter himself, standing by the 
Swiftsure, just ready to cut loose from her moorings to 
make her trip to The Bank. The Government said it 
wanted to go to Siasconset. In such a matter as that the 
Captain replied that he was its oyster. This frank ex- 
pression from a bluff old sailor established the Captain in 
the confidence of the Government. Then the Government 
told the Captain that it was the Government who was seek- 
ing transportation. The Captain replied that he would as 
soon carry the Government as a Sunday school super- 
intendent unless it had the itch, in which case it would 
have to go into quarantine at The Bank. The Government 
was still more deeply impressed with the candor and 
honesty of its newly formed acquaintance, and it made up 
its mind that he was the man to tie to in seeking to accom- 
plish his mission. So the Government got over the tail 
board of the Swiftsure with its gripsack, took a seat, and 
soon the craft was slowly moving through The Town. 

The Government proceeded to make inquiries about the 
matter in respect to which it had been deputed to the 
island, to wit, the violation of a statute by one Baxter, 
residing in Siasconset, by displaying upon a domicile sit- 
uate within said village, a symbol or device whereon were 



G2 



THE IfV OLUTION OP A POST OFFICE. 



painted the words "Post Office," and by said symbol ot 
device, the said domicile was held out to the unwary and 
was calculated to deceive them into the belief that said 
domicile was, and is a post office, established by and under 
the authority, and recognized by the United States of 
America, by the grace of God, free and independent, and 
that thereby divers good citizens might be induced to de- 
posit letters, newspapers, merchandise and other mailable 
matter for transportation by and through the mails of the 
United States of America aforesaid, which function the 
said United States of America had, by statute in such cases 
made and provided, reserved unto itself ! 

It didn't take the Captain long to catch on to the situa- 
tion and he declared the statement to be abase fabrication 
He said he knew Baxter well ; in fact, man and boy, they 
had been together on sea and shore for nearly three' quar 
ters of a century; that he and Baxter were inseparable 
and he knew what he was talking about; that if Baxter's 
nose itched, he, in sympathy, involuntarily sneezed- 
whereas, if he had a boil in an uncomfortable position on his 
own person, Baxter never allowed himself to sit down, out 
of respect to his condition ; and the idea that Baxter would 
condescend to the infamy of committing a crime so heinous 
asto put a shingle over his door, which, by implication, 
would hold him out as an officer of the United States 
Government was beyond belief! The earnestness with 
which the Captain made the asseveration was sufficient to 
satisfy the Government, and it stated as much. But the 
Captain said that the honor and good name of his friend 
Baxter were involved, and he insisted upon taking the 
Government to the village to let it see for itself. He did 
take it, but not to 'Sconset, for he sheered the Swiftsure 
off to port, to the little hamlet of Polpis, and there showed 
it every house and every shingle and not a suspicion of a 



THE GOVEENMENT FOOLED. 63 

sign of a post office was to be seen. The Government left 
the island satisfied that an outrage had been perpetrated 
upon the character of a public spirited and law abiding 
citizen, and he so reported to his superior. Correspon- 
dence was renewed between the marshal and the District 
Attorney, followed by an exchange of notes between the 
District Attorney and the Post Office Department, all of 
which will be found classified and indexed in the archives 
at Washington. The matter was not heard of afterwards 
and the sign of the post office continued to stand untouched 
on the queer old house. And each day as he arrived with 
the pouch he tooted his horn, and resident and visitor 
alike were warned that soon the mail would be opened and 
distributed; and rather than anybody should be disap- 
pointed at not receiving a letter, the Captain would write 
one himself and collect the transinsular postage. If the 
letter didn't suit them, it was not his fault. He had done 
his best. 

The Ca^jtain felt that if he was not a postmaster de jure, 
he was at least de facto, and as such, he had a keen appre- 
ciation of the responsibility that rested upon him in his 
unofficial employment. The inviolability and safety of the 
mails were a source of constant care and anxiety and he 
devised means to secure both. The pouch was a carpet 
bag of colossal proportions and uncertain antiquity. By 
means best known to himself, it had been made wind, 
water and fire proof. In the transit it was secured by a 
combination lock made of a piece of retired clothes line, 
and the secret of opening it was only known to the post- 
master in Town, to the Captain, and his wife, and they never 
divulged the secret until about 1880, when the necessities 
of the mail traffic compelled them to confide it to Tucker 
from the Hub, who thenceforward became the volunteer aid 
in receiving and delivering the mass of mail matter 



64 THE EVOLUTION OF A POST OFFICE. 

coming through the office, and he also acted as cashier in 
collecting local postage between The Bank and The Town 
in which violation of the postal laws Mrs. Baxter was an 
abettor and the Captain himself no better. But as every- 
body was glad that somebody was bold enough to defy the 
law that the public convenience might be served, neither 
Tucker, nor Mrs. Baxter, nor the Captain were indicted 
Tucker also took the contract for unraveling the intricacies 
of the Captain's accounts as express messenger and common 
carrier. They were kept in a complex method peculiar to 
the Captain. It was a combination of single entry in his 
head, double entry on a scrap of paper lying loose in his 
pocket and quite as often no entry at all, and between the 
three it was difficult to tell whether the Captain was rush- 
ing into the vortex of bankruptcy or was amassing thou- 
sands of dollars each season. But it was never seriously 
stated that he was getting rich, and that bankrupi;cy was 
not assured each year is probably due to the vigilance of 
Tucker as a successful collector, in spite of the Captain's 
carelessness, and his skill as an accountant and financial 
expert. What Tucker did was done on the principles of 
long, and broad, and deep good nature. His labors like 
those of the quaker preacher were labors of love, which 
after all, give one more pleasure than services that are 
paid for. 

The growth of the place in importance had already sug- 
gested making it a post village, and some years ago The 
Bank did have a premonitory symptom of what was tocome. 
A post office was actually established and the Captain's 
daughter was appointed postmaster. I say postmaster; 
for there is no such office as postmistress. Her salary was 
fixed at twelve dollars a year ! To the Captain was given 
the contract for carrying the mails for which he was re- 
warded by the United States of America in the munificent 



VISIT OF THE POSTMASTER GENERAL. 65 

compensation of eight dollars for every year of service! 
But it didn't last long. The postmaster found that she 
was getting rich too fast. As for the Captain, he was 
afraid that he would be tempted by the accumulated profits 
of his contract, to rush into Wall Street and speculate in 
stocks and perhaps get into the papers as a star route 
swindler. He had read somewhere, an authoritative state- 
ment in respect to the difficulty of traveling through the 
eye of a needle with a camel, as illustrating the chances of 
the rich man entering the kingdom of heaven. He didn't 
mean to get left if he could help it. He wrote to the Post 
Office Department that he would rather carry females than 
mails for the same money, and if it was all the same to the 
Government he preferred to throw up the contract. As 
for the postmaster, she stopped short in her mad career of 
money making in office, and about that time she was seized 
with a severe fit of matrimony which caused her to give 
up official honors and retire into private life. 

Then things went on in the old way again until, one day, 
the Postmaster General came to The Bank for rest and 
pleasure. But he was followed by voluminous correspon- 
dence, and in less than three days his pocket suggested 
and his eye took in the situation. His moral sensibilities 
were shocked to find that the stamped envelopes prepared 
for official letters didn't hold good beyond the limit of the 
post oince at Nantucket. Between The Town and 'Sconset, 
Baxter was an independent post office department to which 
visitors official and unofficial must pay tribute ; and the 
Postmaster General found this to be a heavy draft upon 
his private resources. Things looked serious. He had 
only brought money enough to pay his board and washing 
and to quench the thirst of the official stomach when its 
owner should go a fishing. His private exchequer was being 
so rapidly depleted for local postage that he found he must 



66 THE EVOLUTION OF A POST OFFICE. 

establish a post office or leave the island broke So a 
movement was at once set on foot to extend the postal 
arrangements to The Bank. Captain Baxter was offered 
the postmastership, but he declined. Indoor life and official 
dignity, he said, were not suited to his complexion The 
Postmaster General kept shady to avoid being run down 
with applications for the appointment, but he sent out 
skirmishers to find a suitable man for the office To 
his bewilderment nobody wanted it. The ideal republic 
was at last found, wherein the office sought the man and 
not the man the office. But the man was not to be had 

Then, one lady after another, was importuned to take the 
position but neither prospective honors nor emoluments 
were any inducement to assume the burden of official 
responsibility. None on The Bank were born great nor 
had they achieved greatness, and yet all were averse to 
having greatness thrust u] on them. Argument and en 
treaty were alike unavailing. Such a phenomenon had 
never been heard of and much less seen within federal 
jurisdiction. The Postmaster General started from The 
Bank just as he had broken his last ten dollar bill and re- 
turned to Washington. A special Cabinet meeting was 
called, but neither President, nor minister would believe 
the story. What? a post office and nobody willing to act 
as postmaster? Great Scott! The statement was incredi- 
ble ! To see is to believe ; and when letters came on to the 
department announcing the unsuccessful efforts which had 
been made to get a person to take the office they had to 
own that what they had been told was true. 

At last the batteries of argument and persuasion were 
brought to bear upon Mrs. Almy, a refined and educated 
lady residing on The Bank. She too, was resolute in her 
refusal. But after a few hours of bombardment she 
showed signs of weakening. The advantage was followed 







>2- 



< 



68 THE EVOIjtJTIO?f OI* A l*OST OI'FiCil. 

up. Kelays of summer residents, one after another, visite i 
and labored with her lilie saints bent upon the conversion 
of an obdurate sinner at a high pressure revival. At last, 
after a night past in solemn self communion, she concluded 
to take the position, very much on the principle of the 
girl who married the man to get rid of him. In a few days 
she was clothed with official honors and thenceforward the 
head of her name and its tail were identical, for in official 
correspondence she signed herself P. M. Almy, P. M. 

The Captain took the contract of carrying the mails upon 
his making a promise that he would bear his honors meekly 
and stand up and draw his salary each and every -month 
without flinching. The sign board which, in defiance of 
the law, had been for years over his door was taken down 
and removed to another one, where the Government of 
the United States is represented in the person of the post. 
master. 

As for Tucker of Boston, he had time to rest — the first 
he had in three years. He subsided into the privacy of 
his little house, receiving the thanks of the living in 'Scon- 
set and with a memory to be cherished by generations 
unborn for the sacrifices he made and the care he had 
taken that the post office be not strangled before its birth. 

So the Captain followed the road between The Bank and 
The Town carrying the mails and receiving and landing 
passengers at the wharf, relieved of all cares except that of 
courier. He had become so well known that strangers 
looked for his genial face when they^ame upon the island, 
and from the moment a visitor was seated in the Swiftsure 
he would wait to see where the lightning of his fun would 
strike. His friends had come to be counted by hundreds 
instead of scores as in bygone years. 

And so the routine of his employment continued until the 
year of grace, 1884, when the whistle of the locomotive on 



GAME TO THE LAST. 69 

T\w. Bank announced that the little railway was completed 
from The Town, and later in the day, visitors to the num- 
ber of a thousand came up on the cars to attend the cele- 
bration of the^event. Never had such a gathering been in 
'Sconset before. Old people who had hoped they might 
live to ride on the first train of cars had their wishes 
gratified. In a day the Lightning Express, which for 
twenty years had been run by the old veteran as a pajang 
enterprise was snuffed out. The railway company cut 
rates by half. The Captain dropped his to meet the com- 
petition. Still the tired strangers preferred quick steam 
to slow lightning. Then the Captain announced a further 
reduction to half the rates charged by rail. It was of no 
use. He chartered the town crier to announce on the 
arrival of the boat that the Swiftsure would take passen- 
gers for nothing and give them "a boiled dinner" at 
Scudder's at the wharf before starting, or at the Ocean 
View House at the end of the trip. But the passengers 
preferred the cars. As a last resort he promised never to 
tell a yarn to a passenger who should patronize him 
Several took him at his word and started for The Bank, 
But he found it impossible to change his habits, and before 
they had arrived at Madequecham valley he had stuffed 
them full. He didn't repeat the effort. It was apparent to 
him that he had lost his grip on the passenger traffic to 
and from The Bank. 

"Did the old man die?" I almost hear the reader ask. 
Not much. He has more lives than a cat. He owned up 
that he was beaten and he surrendered in the best of humor. 
But there was all the rest of the island open to the naviga- 
tion of his craft, and in which railway competition need 
not be feared in his day. From Siasconset to Sankaty 
Head, Sesachacha, Quidnet, Squam, and Wauwinet, on the 
north, over Saul's Hills to Polpis on the northwest, were 



70 THE EVOLUTION OF A POST OFPICE. 

drives over moorlands covered with heath and redolent 
with the perfume of wild flowers which find a genial home 
on the soil. From the light house on Sankaty Head, the 
vision can span forty miles to seaward and watch the fleets 
of vessels passing and repassing along the coast. Between 
the placid waters of Sesachacha pond and the ocean, a 
narrow sand beach, scarce a hundred feet in width, inter- 
venes, and over which, in heavy gales, the brine is often 
dashed into the fresh water of the pond. The little 
hamlets on the road to the northward were as large as 
Siasconset was a hundred years ago, but many houses 
were taken down, and removed to be put up again on The 
Bank to swell the importance of the little fishermen's 
village which, in time, was to become a popular seaside 
resort, and the terminal point of a pocket railway. On the 
higher points of the island, on the jaunt over the moors, 
the eye can take in the inner harbor with little yachts and 
row boats moving over its surface, and the attenuated 
peninsula of Coatue, which divides it from the sea. To 
the extreme north the vision follows the line of another 
peninsula, Coskata, with Great Point Light at its head. 
Away from the little hamlets, scarce a house is to be seen 
in a drive extending over miles. Of trees there are none, 
save now and then, a stunted growth is found making an 
unequal struggle for existence. The absence of dwellings 
causes no sense of loneliness, nor does the lack of trees 
suggest a discomfort. The loveliness of the view enchants 
the thoughts, and the cool ocean breezes wafted upon the 
body, though one is clothed in woolens, ensures comfort 
even under the sun at meridian. Homeward bound, late 
in the afternoon of a July or August day, the temperatu3;e 
is sometimes lowered until an overcoat or heavy wrap, if 
taken, are found not to be uncomfortable. And when, at 
last, the little cottage is reached after a day of delights. 



A CHANGE OV BASS. 71 

heavy eyelids impel the visitor to his bed upon which he 
is lulled to sleep by the murmur of the breakers. 

To give visitors such experiences the old master mari- 
ner withdrew his craft from the regular traffic in which 
for nearly a quarter of a century it had been engaged. 

Then, too, he finds himself in demand in The Town. 
Visitors need him as a local guide, even more than they 
required his services for cross island traffic. So when 
occasion calls, he flings his pennant to the breeze on his 
Junior craft, the "Little Swiftsure," and when transport- 
ing passengers about The Town, he entertaineth them 
with marvelous tales. The streets he knoweth as well as 
the town crier or the directory man. He explaineth the 
causes of the gloom and darkness on Candle street ; he 
expatiateth on the absence of corn fields along the line of 
Coon street and the consequent scarcity of coons thereon ; 
he introduceth them into the life and gayety which 
prevaileth on Coffin street ; he exhibiteth to them the old 
habitations and landmarks which aboundeth on New 
street ; he directeth attention to the many curious things 
which have brought Back street to the front ; he telleth why 
it is that Plumb Lane is no longer straight up and down, and 
he regretteth that thirsty mortals can get nothing to 
drink on Water street not even Adam's ale ; he pointeth to 
the palatial residences of the grinding monopolists on 
Mill street, and even showeth the mill wherein the 
aforesaid monopolists grind their grists ; he pointeth out 
depressions in Whale street and he solemnly asseverateth 
that they were made by the flopping of the tail of a sperm 
whale which, having lost his reckoning, under a stress of 
weather, ran ashore in The Town and could not get to sea 
again. Indeed, this veracious volume could not contain 
half the wonderful stories with which he regaleth those 
who take a cruise with him in the "Swiftsure," big or little. 



STRANDING OF THE SWIFTSURE, 

But on her first voyage to new ports the Svviftsure 
met with disaster. She left port at The Bank about 10 
o'clocli in the morning with a full passenger list and crew, 
bound for Wauwinet, and she reached her moorings with- 
out mishap, though two or three times she touched a sand 
spit, the shifting character of which between Sesachacha 
and Quidnet malie the navigation awliward to an old sailor, 
and even dangerous to those not familiar with the waters. 
The weather was delightful, and the ride in every way en- 
joyable. In the afternoon the Captain started on his 
return trip. After a little detention the Swiftsure safely 
passed the bar of the Wauwinet House and said "good 
by" to the bar keeper. It was high tide and there was 
every indication of a pleasant voyage. When abreast of 
Squam, she encountered a strong head wind, but with the 
coal bunkers, under the front seat, full, the Captain had no 
doubt of reaching his anchorage at 'Sconset by nightfall. 
During the dog watch he sighted the weather-cock at Eat 
Fire Spring, three points off the starboard bow, when he 
hauled to the westward and got a range on Sankaty Light, 
to pass through the slew to the eastward of Saul's Hills. 
The Captain had not sailed in these waters for nearly half 



DANGEKS OF INSULAK NAVIGATION. 73 

a century, and in that time the channel had shifted con- 
siderably and he found it difficult to steer clear of the 
shoals which had made out at various points. He care- 
fully scanned the chart and found his bearings were right, 
and he had a lookout on the knightheads to catch the first 
glimpse of shoal water. While pursuing this course he 
was shut in by a heavy fog that came up from the south- 
west. He lost his range and was compelled to steer by 
compass. Frequent soundings were taken as an additional 
precaution. The Captain had not calculated the influence 
of the tides in affecting his course. It was then setting 
strong to the eastward, and while he was cautiously steam- 
ing about four knots an hour, the current, unkno\^n to 
him, had drifted his vessel off her course and, without a 
moments warning, she struck on Starbuck shoal. In an 
instant, the linch-pin of the wheel on the starboard quar- 
ter broke, and unable to get steerage way, the vessel 
was pounding heavily against the sand. The boatswain 
piped all hands on deck, and every man was at his station 
ready for any emergency that might arise. There was 
dismay among the passengers, and a panic would have 
resulted but for the coolness of the veteran commander 
which inspired them with confidence ; for on his assurance 
that there was no immediate danger their fears were quiet- 
ed. Soon the fog lifted, and then the Captain unlashedthe 
starboard horse from the davits, put on a boat's crew 
and pulled for Polpis harbor for assistance, leaving the vessel 
in charge of his dog Jack, with the stewardess second in 
command. During his absence the sea broke heavily upon 
the vessel's port and she was gradually careening over to 
starboard when the stewardess, with great presence of 
mind, with a piece of rope yarn taken from her spanker 
gear (I mean the vessel's, of course) tied a section of her 
petticoat to the whip stock and raised it as a signal of 



74 STKANDING OF THE SWIFTSUEE. 

distress. This was sighted by the underwriter's agent 
who was on the "walk" of his pig pen with a telescope; 
and he at once dispatched two island tugs up the road to 
the scene of disaster. They met Captain Baxter and 
took him on board and went to the rescue of the Swiftsure. 
On arriving he found that the crew had broken open the 
locker, taken out a bottle of rum, which the Captain 
carried for medicinal purposes, and nothing else, 
and were having high jinks, while the passengers were 
wild with apprehension. But the return of the Captain 
restored order, and discipline was at once enforced. Haw- 
sers were carried out to the tugs and soon the vessel was 
hauled off the shoal and was towed to her anchorage by 
the Captain's stable which she reached about 9 o'clock at 
night. 

The coolness and intrepidity of the old mariner in this 
trying emergency, which was one of the most exciting 
episodes of his eventful career, are spoken of by the pas- 
sengers in terms of the highest praise. A meeting was at 
once called and a resolution adopted appointing a com- 
mittee to purchase a new trumpet for presentation to him 
whenever he should furnish the money to get it. 

This is the only mishap that has occurred to the Swift- 
sure in attempting to sail in new waters. Every shoal, 
and rip, and slew, is now familiar to him, and with land- 
marks, and buoys, and compass, and chronometer to aid 
him, neither fogs, nor icebergs, nor tides, deter him from 
making his course by night or day whenever the traffic 
demands it. 

And yet the channels are many and every one devious. 
To the stranger they are bewildering. As already de- 
scribed, between 'Sconset and The Town, the main high- 
way is made up of deep ruts worn by the wheels of passing 
wagons and another, intervening, by the feet of horses. In 



I 




-2 

in 






J 









>^ 



76 STRANDING OF THE SWIFTSURE. 

number they are sufficient to admit of a dozen teams 
passing abreast. The highway is perhaps a hundred feet 
wide, its limits being marked by rows of diminutive pines 
on the north and south, planted by a public spirited citizen 
25 years ago, in the hope that they would restock the 
island with timber, of which it had been denuded for over 
a century, to furnish fuel and for ship building. Take 
any line of ruts and in five minutes the traveller will 
wish he had taken another. Once in it, it may be a half 
mile before he will have an opportunity to get out, and 
then, if he changes, he will be sorry. He may attemptj^to 
cross into the first over the ridges of earth and heath. The 
heavy jolts are followed by screams of the women and ejac- 
ulations of the men, oftentimes more emphatic than polite. 
All sigh for a change even to a western corduroy road, as 
a luxury in comparison. Whoever has tried the experi- 
ment never makes the second attempt. It 

"Makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others we know not of." 
Still that road has one merit. Start from Siasconset, 
the traveller, without guidance, will be sure to arrive in 
Town. Liver, and spleen, and stomach, may be rudely 
jostled but he cannot go astray. If he has a momentary 
doubt his horse has none. 

But leaving the main thoroughfare, the stranger is trans- 
lated into a region of almost perpetual doubt. For a 
short distance the road may be fenced. But the time 
comes, and that very shortly, when fences cease and he 
finds himself pursuing a beaten way through an open 
country. Still he is serene, although there is not a house 
or human being in sight. But when he comes to the 
forks of a road, or to a cross-road, he has slight misgivings. 
Or, if the road takes him to a gate, the feeling is intensi- 
fied. Doubts come on quick and fast. The gate suggests 



A SEA OF UNCERTAINTY. 77 

that all this time he has been driving upon private property 
and has been a trespasser without knowing it. Yet he 
musters up courage to open the gate and pass through. 
Very soon he sees in the distance another gate which, un- 
less opened, will bar his further progress. Then he is 
satisfied that he is within somebody's field and is a tres- 
passer, and the horrible thought crosses his mind that 
he has lost his way beside. In a moment the injured 
owner may appear and forcibly eject him from the premises. 
As he goes along he sees signs nailed on the fence boards 
on which is painted "No shooting allowed in this pasture." 
He finds comfort in the statement. If there is no shoot- 
ing, he need have no fears of a visitation of a bullet or 
bird shot in his person. But it occurs to him that such an 
interpretation of the words may not be what is intended. 
It may mean that sportsmen ar^ not allowed to shoot 
birds on the land designated. This confirms him in the 
idea that he is on private property and it may be that the 
owner is secreted in some bush and watchmg him, under 
the belief that he is on a poaching expedition. At any rate, 
he, a stranger, is rendering himself liable for intruding 
upon others lands But he passes the second gate in 
the hope that he will get upon the public road undiscover- 
ed. Thunder and lightning ! He runs on a third gate. He 
pulls through that. Next he is confused by coming to the 
fork of a road, and either tine bears equal evidence of being 
a traveled way. Doubt is piled upon doubt. Perhaps the 
owner of the horse, after starting him aright, gave the 
direction to let the animal take his own way and that he 
would be sure to reach the place he wished. But the stop 
he has made, and the hesitation he has shown, seem to 
have aroused doubts in the mind of the horse as well. 
And when he finally concludes to rely upon the instinct of 
the animal, the instinct seems to have resolved itself into 



78 STRANDING OF THE SWIFTSUKE. 

a minus quantity. At any rate, the horse, perversely or 
otherwise, makes no choice. In the exigency the stranger 
chooses one or the other road and regards it as about an 
equal chance whether he is right or wrong. The course 
of the road is itself bewildering. Then comes a turn to 
the left or right, but with the road on which he is, con- 
tinued in direct line. What was uncertainty now becomes 
almost distraction. A look forward shows an opening in 
a fence which seems to invite him further. Just then he 
sees another team beyond, and that fact satisfies him that 
he is on the right road. He passes through the opening 
only to meet the other team turning around and coming 
back. Each party looks at the other inquiringly. A con- 
sultation discloses the fact that they are a couple of 
vehicular babes in the woods. Each wants to go to the 
same place and each tells the other all he doesn't know 
about the way. The stranger turns his wagon, comes out 
of the opening followed by the other, pursues his course 
back to the turn of the road he had discarded, to follow 
the straight course and sheers off in the other direction. 
Then he comes to a place where he has the choice of 
crossing a little rickety bridge male of rough and decayed 
planks or pulling through a stream of uncertain depth which 
carries off the dark waters of a peat swamp. The ruts of 
wagon wheels show that the stream is passed by vehicles. 
,The bridge is less assuring. The one may be suggestive 
of discomfort arising from the depth of the water. The 
other is manifestly extra-hazardous. The horse solves the 
doubt by pulling forward through the stream with the 
water reaching above the axles. The shrieks of the hidlos 
at such a time do not have a tendency to establish equanim- 
ity of mind and temper. These experiences may be 
repeated on the route, but inevitably one reaches the point 
he is after, simultaneously, or within a few minutes after or 



SAILING DIEECTIONS. 79 

before the other team which had got adrift and had chosen 
still another road. For it is an extraordinary fact that, all 
a person has to do in traversing Nantucket island is to 
keep his bearings right and he will be sure to land 
where he wants. Nantucket town, Siasconset, and Wau- 
winet are the points of a right angled triangle. Midway 
on the hypotenuse, between The Town and Wauwinet, is 
Polpis. Start from either point in the right direction and 
keep one's bearing with reference to the dome of the 
Unitarian Church or Sankaty Lighthouse, either of which 
can be seen for miles, and any one of a half a dozen turns 
from the road will carry him to his destination. 

But for peace of mind it is better that the visitor confide 
himself to an old navigator, of whom Captain Baxter is 
chicfest and loveliest among ten thousand. 




^* L^kt' H°7 **-/ -fe*t/ HV 



AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT. 

One day it was rumored that a discovery of great archeo- 
logical importance had been made on The Bank which 
probably had reference to, and would throw light upon 
events connected with the early history of the island. As 
the particulars became known, the village was excited and, 
after a time, was convulsed from center to circumference. 
The inhabitants were arrayed in hostile factions, the one- 
side claiming that it was of inestimable value in interpret- 
ing early traditions handed down from past generations, 
while the other scouted the idea that it had any historic 
significance, and boldly asserted that the suggestion of its 
antiquity was the merest figment of the imagination, if it 
was not founded in fraud and forgery. Even the visitors 
were driven into the controversy and they discussed the 
merits of the alleged discovery in heated words. The 
absorbing question of whether the railroad cars would 
relegate horses and box wagons into things of the past was 
forgotten in the rankling disputes that were heard in 
respect to the authenticity of the document — for such was 
theftnd — ^the origin of which was veiled in mystery. 



8U AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT, 

One day Captain Baxter was rummaging through the 
garret of his house situated near the pump, in which the 
majesty of the Government is represented by Mrs. Almy 
the postmaster. He found an old chest, the existence of 
which he had not previously known. He removed it to his 
dwelling to examine its contents, Besides odds and ends of 
fishing tackle, many scraps of paper containing written 
words and figures in which pounds, shillings, and pence 
appeared, some pieces of old leather, a few printed books, 
the remains of an old fashioned lantern with a piece of 
candle in its socket, and some other matters of no impor- 
tance, there was an aged stained document made up of 
several sheets of paper attached together, and the appear- 
ance of which attracted the Captain's attention. It was 
covered with what seemed to be written characters, which 
he tried to decipher. Not succeeding with one pair of 
spectacles he put on two. But with these optical auxil- 
iaries he could only gather that it was a paper written 
evidently with painstaking care, the letters of which were 
of a form long since obsolete and interesting only to anti- 
quarians and book worms whose earthly paradise is in the 
midst of the cobwebs of forgotten literature. The Captain 
could not make head or tail of the paper, though heads and 
tails profusely ornamented the letters, as in the originals 
of Magna Charta and other authentic ancient documents. 
After two days of personal investigation he called in aid 
another veteran mariner, and he with enthusiasm under- 
took an examination. He boxed the compass in eyeing it ; 
he got its avoirdupois on a pair of counter scales ; he took 
an observation with quadrant and sextant and calculated 
its latitude and longitude to the fraction of a hair ; and yet 
he was bothered to find its position on the chart. Then 
another old Captain was brought into consultation .who 
tried to fix its position by dead reckoning and he didn't 



OLD MAEINEltS PUZZLED. 83 

succeed any better. As old sailors could not seem to 
wrestle with the problem they took a. landsman into their 
counsel, in the hope that he might make headway in the 
interpretation of the document. He took its dimensions ; 
tested it by rule and compass, and by square and bevel. He 
looked wise as if he had penetrated the boundaries of the 
mystery and had got a grip on its true inwardness. But 
as he said nothing, a satisfactory explanation at his hands 
didn't seem very promising. Then another citizen tackled 
it with plumb-bob and level and afterwards tested the pig- 
ments with which it was written by chemicals specially 
imported from The Town, and he was able to say with con- 
fidence, that it was an ancient document. But it was not 
until the resident oracle of The Bank brought it it under 
his vision through his prehistoric, three story and base- 
ment telescope, that they were able, here and there, to dig 
out a sentence, when all were confirmed in the belief that 
Captain Baxter had struck a hundred barrel literary whale. 
Little by little, as each in turn, and then by pairs, and then 
by threes looked closely and critical lyat the paper, the words 
were disentangled from the old fashioned spelling and 
antique letters, until they reached a point where the 
writing wholly faded out, and the further effort to decipher 
had to cease until experts could examine the paper and 
apply agents by which they might be able to restore the 
faded letters to the surface. But the document so far as 
it was legible, when translated into plain Saxon English, 
and in the current spelling of our generation, is as follows : 

Chapteb I. 

1. It was given unto Philetus the scribe to write these 
things. 

2. Wherefore hath he put them down in truth, and hath 
written naught in anger. 



84 AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT. 

3. It came to pass in those days that there came to the 
tent of Thomas, who was likewise called Maigh Sea, a man 
who was sought for by those who were in authority. 

4. Forasmuch as the man believed not in the manner of 
worship which the elders of the congregation had ordained ; 
for they were Pharisees in their day and generation. 

5. And because he believed not in their manner of wor- 
ship, the elders counseled together and said that such as he 
should be brought before the magistrates, there to be tried 
for their unbelief. 

6. And because Thomas, when a" great tempest came 
over the land had given shelter unto the stranger whom 
elders were seeking, that they might punish him for his 
unbelief, he was brought before the magistrates, who ad- 
judged that he forfeit unto them in authority a hundred 
shekels of silver. 

7. Whereat Thomas was sorely grieved. 

8. For he was a Just man and walked in the paths of 
righteousness, albeit the elders declared him, because he 
had given shelter unto the stranger, to be a sinner and not 
worthy to be in the congregation. 

9. And straightway the stranger, was taken before the 
magistrates. 

10. And it was seen that his outer garment was shaped 
like unto the belly of a fish, and that the hat which he wore 
upon his head was in width near half an ell, from the 
port to the starboard side thereof. 

11. And furthermore that he spake not in words like the 
Pharisees and those in authority, but in the words of the 
common people. 

12. Wherefore the magistrates saw that he was not of 
the congregation. 

13. And because he worshiped not in the manner of 
the Pharisees he straightway was taken out and hanged. 



SEASICK PILGRIMS. 85 

14. For the elders had said it was not meet that one who 
worshiped not as did the Pharisees should live. 

15. And Thomas took counsel with his brethren and 
they said we will no longer tarry in a land where we can- 
not do kindness unto the stranger who cometh unto our 
gates and who may need food and raiment, and may like- 
wise want shelter from the rain, and the snow, and the 
storm, and the tempest and the blizzard. 

16. But we will seek rather a home among the heathen 
on an island in the sea and there pitch our tents away 
from men who would seek to persecute us that we do good 
to our fellow men. 

Chapter II. 

1. So Thomas, who was likewise called Maigh Sea, 
together with a kinsman, Eduardus, who was likewise 
called Stahr Bukke, betook themselves unto a little ship 
that they might go unto the island in the sea where they 
could find among the heathen the compassion they had 
not found among the people with whom they dwelt. 

2. And they were borne by the winds upon the billows 
far from the land. 

3. And great were their sufferings in their pilgrimage 
upon the waters to seek the island in the sea whereon the 
elders and the magistrates should not make them afraid. 

4. For the waves did toss the ship in divers waj^s and 
they were made sick unto death and they did cast up the 
food they had eaten into the waters. 

5. (Whereat, the fishes that were in the sea did greatly 
marvel, for they tumbled not to the racket.) 

6. So Thomas and his kinsman Eduardus did question 
one with the other whether it were not better they had staid 
upon the land, even though they suffered sorely at the 
hands of the elders and the magistrates. 



8g AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT. 

7. But they said we will go on until we reach the land 
we seek, for should we not, we should be mocked by our 
kinsfolk on our return. 

8. And great was the result thereof to the generations 
of men which were to come. 

9. They reached the island in the sea; and they sought 
and held counsel with the chief men among the heathen ; 
who told them that they might abide thereon. 

10 Whereat Thomas, and his kinsman Eduardus, were 
greatly rejoiced, and they said unto one another, now will 
we have the bulge on the heathen even as the elders and 
magistrates did have the bulge on us in the land in 
which we have dwelt. 

Chapter III. 

1. And when they returned unto their brethren and told 
them of what they had done their hearts were made ex- 
ceeding glad. 

2. So they gathered their families and their household 
goods together and went forth and pitched their tents upon 
the island in the sea. 

3. And they were just men and sought not to take what 
was not their own ; so they did whack up their shekels 
among themselves that they might buy the lands whereof 
the heathen were possessed. 

4. And they said unto the heathen, that we may dwell 
among you without strife and bitterness, it is meet that 
we buy from you the lands whereon you live. 

5. And the heathen were simple and without guile and 
they saw not the Ethiopian that was hidden in the fence. 

6. For they understood not the thrift of him who, in 
meek and lowly spirit, profiteth in every trade. 

7. So they sold unto the strangers their land who paid 
unto them therefor, one score and six shekels of gold. 



THRIFT IN DEAIi. 87 

8. Albeit the sum was like unto the conscience of him 
who hawketh a new book, and by wiles enticeth the patri- 
arch, and his wives, and his concubines, and his sons, and 
his daughters, and his man servants, and his maid ser- 
vants, and the stranger within the gates to buy thereof. 

9. For they were thrifty in their day and generation. 

10. And whether in buying from the heathen their lands, 
or in selling unto them cloth for their raiment, or corn 
for their food, or rum with which to gladden their hearts, 
or in swapping with them jack-knives 'or fishing hooks, 
they did greatly enrich themselves and they did make 
merry thereat. 

11. But the heathen were simple in their minds and they 
saw not wherein the laugh did come. 

At this point the manuscript became illegible. 

The authenticity of the paper formed a theme of dis- 
cussion during the entire season. If it was a veritable 
ancient document, it was believed that it would throw 
light upon disputed points in the early history of Nan- 
tucket. But there were croakers who denied its antiquity 
and sought to depreciate its value. It was furtively 
whispered that anybody who would pass off the Town 
Poor House on unsuspecting strangers as the local home of 
the Italian opera ; who would dedicate the mile stones on 
the main road as marking the sepulchers of departed 
aboriginal chieftians ; who would induce confiding visitors 
to go to Phillips run and lave their feet in its dark waters 
under the representation that it possessed extraordinary 
virtues for curing corns and eradicating bunions ; who, 
upon the spur of the moment, would send thirsty and un- 
initiated visitors to the big hotel on Brant Point, under 
the false representation that it was a lager beer brewery 
and where only they could get the inspiring liquid fresh 
tapped from the wood ; who would give an amateur natural- 



88 AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT. 

ist a strip of broad leaf kelp with the solemn assurance 
that it was the skin of a mammoth eel found only on Nan- 
tucket shoals ; who would induce passengers who intrusted 
themselves to his guidance to buy accident policies before 
starting on their journey, because of the dangers which 
would beset them in crossing the island ; and who gave 
them free passes to the 'Sconset Museum and to the Light 
House, for which he received their grateful thanks ; there 
were those, I repeat, who said that a man who would do 
any and all these things would not hesitate to foist a paper 
of more than doubtful authenticity upon a patient and 
long suffering public ; and as he had locked up the docu- 
ment in his safe, and refused to show it to anyone but 
his own friends, they claimed that their suspicions were 
justified. 

But the friends of the Captain, with an abiding faith in 
his integrity, stood by him during the entire controversy. 
They would not for a moment believe that a man of his 
confiding, gentle nature would concoct or even abet a 
fraud so gigantic that, compared with it, highway robbery 
would sink to the level of trespass, and grand larceny 
have no higher dignity in the calendar of wrongs than an un- 
paid book account. Time, they said, would clear up all 
doubts, and the document itself would be left by the old 
mariner in trust to the Atheneum Library and would be 
eageii^^ sought by writers in search of historic truth and 
by scientists for its value as an archeological treasure. 

At the close of the season the acerbity of feeling result- 
ing from the discovery had' largely diminished, and the 
winter's winds chilled the passions it had aroused. Now, 
only the memory of the dissensions exists, and the Cap- 
tain occasionally produces the paper for the inspection of 
his friends, and with a wicked wink of his weather eye, 
wonders how anybody could have doubted its genuineness. 



THE PUMP CELEBRATION. 

The air of Nantucket induces laziness. The active busi- 
ness man finds liis weight increased to two tons within a 
weeli after he has reached The Bank at 'Sconset, and that 
nothing less powerful than a derrick can lift him off. Rest 
is the objective point of almost all who visit the island for 
the summer, and it becomes the ordinary condition of 
every one on his arrival, It can be had in any form ; at 
wholesale or retail ; by weight or measure ; in solid chunks 
or in molecules ; fresh caught or in hermetically sealed 
packages; liquid to be taken without being shaken or 
solid without being dissolved. Tlie human organism, men- 
tal or physical, can rest in seven living and sleep in five 
dead languages. I have known men whose brains and 
muscles could not resist doing active duty 16 hours out 
of 24 at home, who, within a week after their arrival at 
Siasconset, could loaf at the mark and hit it 17 times out 
of a possible 20. They need not have missed the other 
three if they had not been too sleepy to take aim. The 
visitor rises lazy in the morning, rests during the day, and 



90 THE PUMP CELEBRATION. 

lazily retires to his bed to sleep, with mind too lazy to 
dream. 

Such being the ordinary personal experience on The 
Bank, the demand for amusements is reduced to a mini- 
mum. In the special sense in which the word is used, 
there is scarce any. Of course, there is social intercourse 
and that of the most pleasant character. Peripatetic quar- 
tettes, musical artists, and readers, who combine profit 
with pleasure in visiting watering places, find the apathy 
of the people distressing. There is indifference even to 
artists of rare merit. It is not that, elsewhere, they do not 
take interest in such matters, for they are intellectual, 
refined and cultivated in their tastes. But it is not for 
such things they come to the seaside. 

Still, if an entertainment, local in its origin and purpose 
is proposed, even if it is an almost impromptu affair, it is 
sure to be well attended and financially successful. The 
chapel debt was nearly all paid by the proceeds of concerts 
organized among visitors. On such occasions the ladies 
take hold in earnest. They skirmish among visitors for i 
performers. They send out drummers to sell tickets and 
advertise the event according to the usage of the The 
Bank, that is, by tacking a notice on the village pump. 
That antiquated log, not only supplies water but also the 
place of local newspaper for announcing facts which parties 
generally want known. If anybody has lost anything, or 
•has found anything; if there is to be preaching in the 
chapel, or base ball in the field; a "reading" in the parlor 
of the hotel for entertainment of visitors, or a hop in the 
dining room for the young people to join in and the old 
people to look on at, a written announcement of the fact is 
put on the pump and thus the general alarm is sounded. 
Those who are interested in the event repair to the ren- 
dezvous. Timid bachelors and available widowers have 



'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 



91 



time to betake themselves to places of refuge. 

Sometimes the most ordinary events are made the excuse 
for a pretentious celebration in which the forms of a great 
occasion are gone through. The old pump on the main 
street had been for years out of repair. A visitor, at his 
own suggestion, undertook the duty of putting it in order. 
Of course, it was Tucker from the Hub. The act was so start- 
ling that his friends thought it deserving of special recog- 
nition. A lady on The Bank quietly arranged a celebra- 
tion of the event. On the day fixed, the pump was deco- 
rated with wreaths and festoons of flowers. A platform 
was erected and seats arranged upon it. Those not in the 
secret were inquiring what in thunder it all meant. At 
noon it was announced that a celebration of the repair of 
the old pump would be held at 3 o'clock. The whole vil- 
lage turned out. An eminent soldier who had been select- , 
ed to preside, opened the proceedings with a most felici- 
tous speech. A lady, now the minister of a church in 
New Haven, read an original poem. A visiting journalist 
Avas the orator of the day. Tucker himself was forced to 
appear, and blushingly he made a speech. A literary gen- 
tleman in Town also furnished a poem. An eminent 
lawyer from a western state delivered the closing address, 
and the exercises were concluded by the singing of some 
high pressure, broad gauge verses constructed by a dis- 
tinguished locomotive builder from western Ncav York, 
in which the entire assemblage joined ; and the local 
papers published the proceedings verbatim, for the delec- 
tation of their readers. The "oration" was as follows : 

Mr. Burgomaster and fellow toilers on 'Sconset Bank : 
The history of every place shows that its affairs are now 
and then beset with a crisis, sometimes alarming in its 
portents. The bigger the place the bigger the crisis. In 
Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Kome, in ancient times, there 



92 THE PUMP CELEBEATION. 

were periods when things were lively. The most sinis- 
ter prognostics were made by the "outs" unless they were 
allowed to swap places with the "ins" ; and dire results 
were promised, if the "outs" were permitted to get their 
noses in the public crib. In modern times Paris, Berlin, 
St. Petersburgh, Vienna, Kome, Madrid, and even London 
have their periodical throes. And as for New York, it is 
a perennial fountainof critical excitements. A year passed 
without an alarming crisis would cause its thoughtful 
citizens to suspect that the crack of doom was near. They 
would get their ascension robes from the washerwoman, 
put on the heavenly rigs and give an attentive ear to catch 
the first reverberation of the sound of Gabriel's trumpet. 
But Siasconset, has been singularly free from this feverish 
spirit. It is but once in a generation or so that a great 
crisis occurs in its aiTairs. Sometimes, however, the ma- 
chinery of the universe does get out of kilter in a way 
to directly affect this particular piece of real estate within 
the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
Or, perhaps it is because the guardian angels of The Bank 
get into a miff among themselves, and thus are led to 
neglect their charge. Then the minds of the people from 
Captain John Pitman's back fence to Asa Jones' Pochick 
barn, and from the fish houses to George C. Macy's castle, 
for a time become unsettled. And so it happened in this 
year of grace. 

Ages ago, in the tertiary period of Nantucket history, 
this venerable log was put into this identical hole, in this 
very ground on which we now do stand. The event was 
attended with imposing ceremonies. It was a great day 
for 'Sconset. Weeks before, the event was heralded by 
the town crier from the wharf to the wind mill, and his 
words were wafted across the Sound to the Vineyard and 
thence to the Qape and the main land ; and a northeast gale 



THE GATHERING OF THE MULTITUDES. 93 

that was blowing at the time carried them over to Long 
Island. Wlien the day came, on which the pump was put in 
tlie place, it was equal in the magnitude of the occasion to 
a Brooklyn Sunday school picnic, a Khode Island clam 
bake, a Nantucket "squantum," a Concord School of Phil- 
osophy, anEcclesiastical council, a New York political mass 
meeting, and an Irish wake all combined and boiled down in- 
to one. From Great Point and Wauwinet to Muskeget ; from 
Madaquecham to Masquetuck ; from Madeket ditch and 
Wannecommett on the west, to Squam, and Quidnet, and 
Sesacacha, and Pohick on the east ; and from Monomoy, 
and Shimmo, and Pokomo, and Shawkemo on the harbor, 
and from The Town, the beauty and the fashion, the wealth 
and the intelligence of the Island assembled to do honor 
to the occasion. The enthusiasm even reached the off- 
islanders. From the Vineyard came the solid citizens of 
Squibnocket with their equally solid wives. The magis- 
trates of Chappaquanset were here in a body bearing their 
staves of office, and followed by a retinue of the most dis- 
tinguished citizens of that paradisaical precinct. The men 
of Chappaquidick came prepared to resolutely wrestle with 
any amount of provender that the affluent citizens of Sias- 
consct should have the hardihood to provide ; and odds 
were freely offered that, in a given time, they would eat 
against quantity and with a given quantity they would eat 
against time, with no takers. From Long Island there 
came representative men from Syosett ; and from Amagan- 
sett ; and from Seatauket ; and from Quogue ; and from Patch- 
ogue ; and from Aquebaug ; and from Shinicock ; and from 
Mattinicock ; and from Ketchebonneck ; and from Speonk. 
Then there were present from the Cape and the main land, 
in squads, companies and battalions, the public spirited 
citizens of Cataumet ; of Quashnet ; of Monomet ; of Wen- 
aumet ; of Scussett ; of Pocassett ; of Cohassett ; of Mono- 



94 THE PUMP CEliEBKATION. 

missett ; of Neponsett ; of Acushnott ; of Onset ; of Wy- 
bossett ; of Mattapoisett ; of Poponesett ; of Narragansett ; 
of Coonemosett ; of Woonsockett ; of Pawtuckct ; of Mono ; 
hansett ; and of Quamquisset ; not to mention large delega- 
tions from Monomoscoy and Sippican. 

It was a glorious day for this Bank and don't you forget 
it. Guns were fired from daybreak till nightfall. Every 
dory was decked with gay bunting from deck to main peak, 
and from bowsprit to spanker boom. Processions led by 
brass bands paraded the streets. And as for hospitality 
ten try-kettles with a retinue of cooks were in use all day 
constructing chowder. And doughnuts were fired at the 
gathered multitudes and caught on the fly in their mouths, 
while cider flowed from the spiggots of a hundred barrels 
until the gullet of the thirstiest "coof" was filled to reple" 
tion, and he devoutly thanked his stars that for once he 
had had enough. 

And the pump. Well, it was a beauty as pumps go. It 
was critically surveyed by the admiring throng from all 
the points of the compass, and from the cornerstone at the 
lowest depths of the encircling wall to the graceful capital 
which surmounted the log at its dizzy hight, all pronounced 
it good. 

Thus was the career of this water bolster auspiciously 
begun. Year after year, decade after decade, generation 
after generation, first as little boys and girls, then as 
blushing youths and maidens, next as strong and vigorous 
men and women, and lastly as feeble folk in declining years, 
did the people here work that pump handle up anddoAvnas 
lively as the average candidate shakes the hands of voters 
before election, and elevate to the surface for man and 
beast that limpid draught which, like Doctor Johnson's tea 
cheers but not inebriates. But men, and women, and peo- 
ple, and nations, and even planets, and perhaps suns 



DECAY OF THE PUMP. 95 

and stars have their careers of birth, of growth, of fulness, 
of decline and of death. And it could not be expected, in 
the natural order of events, that a 'Sconset pump, albeit- 
brought into existence under such brilliant surroundings 
and honored by being placed on the main street of 
the comfort capital of the coast, could last for ever, 
nor carry its buoyant powers of juvenescence into 
green old age. There came a time when its useful, 
ness became impaired, First, there was a degeneration in 
its valvular tissues which betokened not only functional 
but possible organic disorder in a vital part. Next a lesion 
of the log was strongly suspected, which resident hydro- 
staticians located about midshij^s, somewhere between 
the main hatch and the keelson. The result was that it 
required a concentration of mental determination, and 
then employment of largely increased elbow grease to lift 
to the surface the water needed for daily consumption in 
the pots and kettles of 'Sconset housewives. Then the 
nozzle became loose in its socket, andhalfthe water raised 
for the pail miscarried and trickled down outside the pump 
log back into the well again. This was discouraging 
enough of itself. But at last matters grew so bad that it 
needed a strength equal to that of a donkey engine and a 
blue dog shark, combined, to hoist sufficient water to 
dilute the morning nip of New England rum with which 
the prudent 'Sconset citizen was wont, in those days, to 
fortify himself against rheumatism ; and colic ; and chil- 
blains ; and dropsy ; and gripes ; and peritonitis ; and 
cerebro-spinal meningitis ; and phthisis pulmonalis ; and 
aurora borealis; and sui generis; and oscarus wildus 
aestheticitis, and the Lord only knows the many more 
dreadful ailments which even now delight to worry us poor 
mortals in our mournful travel through this vale of tears. 
Then there came the decline in the whale fishery. As 



96 THE PUMP CELEBRATION. 

all the misfortunes of Nantucket seemed to date from that 
event, and as it is certain that one after another the oil 
pumps went into disuse and ruin, it is not to be supposed 
that this already wind-broken water pump would not sym- 
pathize with the general demoralization and decaj^ and 
catching the infection of despair, feel that if Nantucket 
could not live by catching whales and trying out blubber 
there was no use for either pumps or water, and that it was 
time for it to go upon the retired list of superannuated 
water works. And so it happened that, one melancholy 
morning AvhenCaptain Kobert Pitman came to the pump to 
fill a pail with water, he found that the handle had suffered 
a compound comminuted fracture and seemed permanently 
disabled. 

Well, long years passed in which the old pump stood in 
the roadway, a rejected ruin, ever suggestive of the possi- 
bilities of aiTording life giving waters to the thirsty way- 
farer, but nevertheless, a mockery, a delusion and a snare 
to him who sought them from it ; for he who worked the 
handle found the pump as dry as a sermon on election and 
probation, exhumed from the musty polemics of fifty years 
ago. 

It may seem strange that I, an off-islander, should be so 
familiar with these facts, not being contemporaneous with 
them nor having had time to search the archives of 'Scon- 
set which Captain George W. Cofiin has so carefully col- 
lated and classified in his library over at the grocery. As 
the next best thing I cut cross lots to that fountain of 
historic lore. Captain William Baxter, and from that high 
authority learned the facts which I have embodied in this 
erudite and truthful narrative, all of which he saw and part 
of which he was. 

And now, to recur to the theme with which I began my 
remarks on this momentous occasion, to wit, the crisis. 



A SCARCITY OF FLUIDS. 97 

For this was the year in which 'Sconset was to pass 
through a crisis unequaled in its history. Let me briefly 
recount the particulars. We have had a season of unpre- 
cedented drought. With an unusual accession of visi- 
tors, the drafts upon the water supply were largely in- 
creased. One by one our cisterns gave out, and at last, 
we were compelled to fall back on the only remaining pump 
which had been dedicated to public use. The situation 
was startling. If the supply should there give out, the 
farmers could not water their cows before milking nor 
water the milk afterwards, that they might not cause dis- 
appointment among their customers, largely increased in 
numbers during the hight of the season. Thus a milk 
famine was imminent. Then water became scarce for 
laundry use and a clean linen famine seemed equally pro- 
bable. A general distress was more likely to result from 
the fact that, at town meeting, the voters, by large majority, 
had decided to grant no licenses for this year on the island. 
As many were cut off from their usual distilled and fer- 
mented beverages, it caused a still greater draft on the 
pump for drinking purposes. Under these circumstances 
brave men took counsel of their fears. If there ever was 
a time when another pump was wanted it was during 
this year. For years I had said to myself "Why don't 
they fix that pump?" Thousands of residents and visitors 
every season had mentally propounded the same conun 
drum and nobody had guessed it. There it stood a per- 
petual sarcasm leveled at us for our inactivity and indiffer- 
ence. It only wanted a man with a homeopathic dose of 
pluck to solve the difficulty quicker than an itinerant 
preacher who has gone into the pulpit without his break 
fast, can pronounce a benediction at the end of morning 
service. But Avhen I get on this Island I could teach any- 
body how not to do it, in six easy lessons, if I were not so 



98 THE tUMP CELEBRATION. 

lazy. In vindicating our race Sydney Smith said tliat 
mankind were naturally sympathetic and moved by impul- 
ses of benevolence and kindness ; that, if A saw B suffering 
he was never easy in his mind until C had helped him out 
of his trouble. Here, I am animated by a similar feeling. If 
there is anything to be done, it is with serene satisfaction 
that I see somebody else do it. For years I saw the de- 
plorable condition of this pump. But I waited for A to 
act. A held on for B. B was anxiously looking for C to 
move in the matter. C seemed to have an abiding faith 
that D would come forward like a little man and fix it. D 
didn't want to stand in the way of E gaining renown. And 
so it went on in the alphabet down, down, until it came to 
T, when lo ! the modest man of action came forward and 
his maiden name was Tucker. He put his hands deep 
down into his trousers pocket, hired the necessary help, 
had the log lifted to the surface, the internal mechanism 
doctored, and ' the whole thing replaced ; and before we 
sleepy souls were done rubbing our eyes in amazement 
at the temerity of the act, the pump, rejuvenated and more 
beautiful than ever, was doing effective service. Where- 
upon, we all threw up our caps in adulation, and in the classic 
language of the boy of the period we shouted "Bully for 
Tucker !" 

Mark the result. The clerk of the weather, because he 
managed the rainfall, thought he had a corner on fresh water, 
and was preparing to squeeze the people on The Bank, 
when Tucker, by a strategical movement foiled him in his 
machinations, he concluded that it was of no use to 
hold back the rain any longer, and in 48 hours we 
were favored with copious showers. And with two wells 
in good condition, and cisterns replenished, we didn't care 
whether school kept or not. 

And now for the moral to which this occasion points. It 



THE MORA.IJ. 99 

is a melancholy reflection, but true, though we did not see 
it in time, that each person whom I see in this vast sea of 
upturned faces (I always did like that expression) might have 
occupied the honorable position that Tucker, from the Hub, 
does to-day, had he the sagacity, and pluck, and good 
sense, to have come forward in the emergency, and accom- 
plis'ied that which he so gracefully did; and he might 
have been the recipient of an ovation such as this, and 
heard his praises sounded in poetry and song, to say 
nothing about this extemporaneous oration that I sat up all 
last night to prepare, and which, by the inexorable logic 
of events, you couldn't escape hearing. But other crises 
will occur on The Bank as they have in the past, though 
not probably attended with such wide spread alarm. The 
general good will require that somebody, at sometime, do 
something ; and when that time does come, any one who 
desires to gain renown, can get it by boldly coming for- 
ward and acting in the emergency and not wait for Tucker, 
from the Hub, to take all the tricks and honors. 




1= 



^ 

(D 

o 



THE WORKING VISITOR. 

To the general rule of acute laziness that attacks 
everybody on reaching Siasconset, and that in time be- 
comes chronic, there is one notable exception. He is an 
eminent professor in a more eminent university. He is a 
profound investigator in the regions of physiology, com- 
parative anatomy and zoology, and an author, as well. He 
would like to be lazy but he cannot. During the college 
year his duties as a teacher engross nearly all his attention, 
and he has not the requisite time to read or write. In the 
meantime new developements in science, double up on him, 
and new ideas are being evolved from his own mind. 
Hence he is compelled to devote his three months vacation 
passed on The Bank to catching up with current scientific 
literature and discharging his cargo of new thoughts on 
paper. He doesn't like it a bit, but it is inevitable. His 
mornings are devoted to work. At such times it is dan 
gerous to approach him. When he has got a grip on an 
idea he holds on to it like a pup to a chicken bone. In 
such supreme moments to interrupt the sequence of 
thought, might cause it to miscarry, and the idea be 
strangled before his birth. But in the afternoon, he re- 



102 THE WORKING VISITOR. 

venges himself for the enforced seclusion by battering the 
balls on the croquet ground, to the dismay of the wickets 
and the terror of the players. Before night he feels that 
he has got even with the fate that compels him to work, 
and he is ready for another go the next morning. Thus, 
study and croquet intermit until the end of the season when 
he is ready to bombard his class with projectiles filled with 
diastema, cusp, peronaBus longus, hippocampus minor, 
auditory foramen, metatarsus and distal phalanges, and 
other technical explosives to shatter the intellects and 
carry devastation into the serried ranks of students. 

For years his special subject of investigation was the 
cat. Pussy became to him his scientific soul's delight. 
With instruments of precision, he surveyed her superficial 
area from the initial point of her sensitive smeller to the 
terminal hair of her elastic tail, and from the highest alti- 
tude of her spinal column in its extreme curvature, to her 
ultimate claws which never fail to inspire respect for the 
feline understanding. He explored her interior structure. 
Her ossous framework he knows from the|coronal suture to 
the last ring in her caudal verterbree. He dissected her 
muscular tissue until he learned all that a reasonable 
being in the present state of natural science can hope, and 
a great deal more than any layman would care to know 
about it. He descended into her thoracic cavity and ac- 
curately computed her lung power in comparison with that 
of the average boy while receiving the punative application of 
the maternal slipper upon a sensitive portion of his person 
which, out of respect to the feelings of modest readers, I 
will not more particularly describe. He studied the in- 
tricate details of her abdominal and pelvic viscoras andean 
tell from what particular section of intestinal tissue, when 
changed into a fiddle string, the sweetest melodies and . 
most ravishing liarmiMiies can be extracted, to contrast 



THE CAT IN PHYSIOLOGY. 103 

favorably with her vocal gymnastics at nocturnal recep- 
tions given to friends of the thomas persuasion, and 
making night hideous from back fences, whence, a million 
of boot jacks, hurled in darkness have never, within the 
memory of man, dislodged a single, nor a married cat. He 
penetrated her cranial cavity and mapped out the cerebral 
convolutions with an accuracy which has exalted feline 
phrenology to the rank of a fixed science. Cats' brains he 
dissected vertically, laterally, and diagonally, and preserved 
them in glass jars filled with 90 per cent alcohol and her- 
metically sealed, so that the savants of future ages will be 
able thereby to learn from what the perfected cat of those 
days was evolved, and the chain will be complete, 
from protoplasm at the beginning of life to the grand cat- 
aclysm when the earth shall, in the natural course of 
planetary existence, burst into ultimate smithereens ! Ex- 
actly when this little side-show will come off, has not been 
announced ; but it is safe to say it will be at a time when 
Tuckernuck clams shall, for ages, have passed into fossil 
existence ; when the "Sheep Question" on Nantucket shall 
not live even as a tradition in the mind of that oracular 
ancient, the oldest inhabitant ; when the last 160 barrel 
whale shall have been caught in the Captain's Eoom and even 
the lucky fisherman himself shall have been gathered unto 
his fathers ; when the nightmares of politics shall have 
ceased to disturb the sleep of the quiet citizen 
and the names of presidential candidates shall have be- 
come but pins' points in the world's history ; and their 
careers, which, at the time of their candidacy were matters 
of lively interest shall have sunk into oblivion. Yes, and 
when the things shall come to pass, whereof this chapter 
is written, the readers of this veracious book and even its 
author will have passed in their checks and doubtless 
climbed the golden stairs. Be that as it may, for years, 



jQ^ THE WOKKING VISITOB. 

■Sconsetcathood has smelled danger in the air of Tlie 
Bank since the Professor's arrival; and in going to or 
coming from the suburb of Pohiclc, the feline helm is put 
to port or starboard, as the ease may be, lest the craft run 
on the shoals of his dissecting table and become unwdling 
contributors to the advancement of anatomical science. 

But eveiy cat did not suffer at his hands, oven though 
convenient. Tor several years he brought with him one 
born with but three legs. It was appropriately called 
.-Trinod "to which name itanswered. Its movements were 
eccentric owing to its congenital defect and its first appear- 
ance was startling to visitors. Then hebroughtw.thhima 
young racoon as a pet. The next year a youthful fox was 
added to the list. Held by strong cords they accompanied 
the Professor, now and then, in his walks through the vil- 
lage But near to his residence was Pelog Macys 
bfru and in and about it his stock of poultry. The 
fox often looked longingly thither, but his owner did 
not suspect his real thoughts. One day young reynard 
broke loose from his moorings and carried death and de- 
vastation into thehennery, and the Macy household parsed 
rwinterwithouteggs,andonlyobtainedsmellsof fricassees 

lien the odors were wafted from Captain Zacheus Swain s 
kUchenby north-east .ephyrs. Whether that fo. will 
pass another summer on The Bank is doubtful. 



GALL AND BITTERNESS. 

For fishing I care nothing. The gifts of Providence are 
dispensed differently. To some is given the genius for 
catching fish ; to others the talent for eating them. I am 
an active member of the last named fraternity. I never 
fish nor cut bait. To this fact I attribute the possession 
of a reasonably fair reputation for veracity in circles where 
I am not well known. I shall never hazard it anywhere 
by going a fishing. For there is an intimate, though oc- 
cult connection between fishing and lying about the result. 
Learned writers on ethics have not given the subject the 
consideration it deserves. Every liar is not a fisherman ; 
the few fishermen who are not liars prove the general 
rule of piscatorial mendacity. I had always believed that, 
independent of an abstract love of lying, there was a 
pleasure experienced by men who went fishing, though I 
had never known it myself. Extended visits to 'Sconset 
bank have dispelled the illusion. I am reluctantly com- 
pelled to believe that the only inducement for men to go 
fishing is for the pleasure of lying about it afterwards. 

This broad generalization does not apply to men who 



106 GAIilj AND BITTEENE>SS. 

gain their subsistence as toilers on tlie waters. With them 
it is business. Sentiment does not enter into the motives 
which lead them to follow the pursuit. It is pelf, not 
pleasure they seek. If the portents on a given day are 
against success, they do not venture further. Such a 
man who should lie about the size or weight of his catch 
would be a moral monstrosity. 

But the average fisherman says he loves the sport. He 
will travel off ten miles to whip a trout stream ; he will troll 
a lake under a broiling sun for pickerel or lake trout, know- 
ing that his face will be brought to such a condition of 
disfigurement that, for a week, his most intimate friends 
will be in painful suspense while determining whether he is 
recovering from the small-pox or has been applying a 
blanket blister plaster to his face, for a toothache involving 
the entire effective force of incisors, canines and molars; he 
will sit along side a stream on a projecting bank and hold a 
rod and line with one hand and fight mosquitoes or black 
flies with the other until nightfall ; he will sit on a dock, or 
wharf for hours with a drop line in hand, and, at brief in- 
tervals, mournfully haul in and spit on his bait and 
throw it out again ; he will anchor his small boat in waters 
which striped bass or sheepshead are supposed to favor 
with their presence and, in solemn silence, await the com- 
ing of a lonesome and unsuspecting fish, which he fancies 
will be tempted by the bait he has thrown to allure his 
hankering maw ; he will do all these things, even in a 
drenching rain or a pinching cold ; and in each case he may 
come home without a scale of his own raising. Yet, he 
will speak in rapturous praises of the delights felt in silent 
communion with nature ; the poetic emotions inspired by 
gazing upon the lovely landscape or listening to the mur- 
muring cadences of the rippling waters; the healthful 
effects on the mind and body resulting from rest for his 




o • 






IT 






108 GAIiL AND BITTERNESS. 

brain and breathing of the pure air free from the noisome 
exhalations of urban surroundings ; to say nothing of the 
wild ecstacy he feels when the finny victim strikes the hook 
and the excitement he experiences in the struggle that en- 
sues, when drawing him from his native element ; and all 
that sort of stuff which the generality of fishermen will 
dose you with in a score of ways. 

But it is all a graceless pretense. Kest, quiet, and sen- 
timent are no compensation for the loneliness, the annoy- 
ance, and the fatigues inseparable from going a fishing. 
Otherwise a whisky flask would not be the^inevitable com- 
panion of every man who starts forth with fell purpose to 
capture the dwellers in the waters. He who really enjoys 
an experience, per se, does not need to reinforce the 
pleasure by copious libations from a bottle. It is only 
when a man wants to revive his drooping spirits that the 
aid of whisky is invoked. 

The more I have investigated the matter, the more I 
have been impelled to the conclusion that the motive 
which induces a man to go a fishing is to offer him the op- 
portunity for preposterous lying. If he catches no fish at 
all, he buys them in the open market and then exhibits the 
stock as the result of his skill. Or, if he brings in a pitiful 
string of light weights, he smuggles it in the house and then 
goes outside ; and in recounting his day's experience, he 
triples the number and quadruples the weight of the catch . 
This is bad enough ; but in nine cases out of ten he drags 
wife, daughter, son, cook, and chambermaid :nto the abyss 
of mendacity to sustain him in his audacious statements. 
For it is yet to be recorded that any fisherman's story was 
ever believed without confirmatory proofs. I have known 
more than one lovely wife and mother, whose home life 
had been beautiful and character spotless, who began a 
downward career in a reluctant aflBrmation of her lius- 



PISCATORIAL ROMANCE. 109 

band's exploits as a fisherman. But th.e initial step taken 
h conscience became seared and her course was down, 
down until the point of abject depravity was reached, when, 
without a blush she would pass hours after hours in build- 
ing crazy-quilts and constructing spring poetry ! Or, if by 
chance, the fisherman hauls in a fish of fair proportions, he 
will regale his friends for three-quarters of an hour in de- 
scribing the efforts the captive made to escape, the dex- 
trous skill he had to use in playing before he was able to 
land him. Even then he will supplement the statement 
with a story of a fish twice as big and four times as gamey 
which got away just as he had him close to the gunwale or 
the bank. 

The story is told of a fisherman who, for fifteen years, 
occupied one position on an abutment of London bridge 
day after day, rain or shine, holding his rod and line, but 
who was never seen to raise a fish. A stranger one day 
ventured to where he was and asked him if he had caught 
anything that day and the reply was no, but that three 
years before he had had a splendid nibble ! It was told to 
illustrate the patience which is supposed to be a charac- 
teristic virtue of the ideal fisherman. But the story is a 
monstrous fabrication. No man would sit so many years 
to experience the perpetual joy of catching no fish at all. 
He could drop a line into his cistern, go off and read the 
Pandects of Justinian, or Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, 
or some other equally exciting literature and find as many 
fish awaiting him when he should return and pull in the 
line. Or,[if by a violent stretch of the imagination we may 
admit that there was such a man, judicially determined to 
be sane, his reply would unquestionably have been an em- 
phatic statement of the marvelous luck he had had the 
previous day or week, followed by a detailed statement of 
the number and avoirdupois of the fish he had landed. 



110 GAIili AND BITTEENESS. 

And if any further proof of the improbability of the story 
were needed, it is shown by the fact that its author utterly 
fails to chronicle that the man was ever seen to investigate 
the contents of a whiskey flask ! 

Fishing and lying being so inseparably connected, ex- 
tended observations I have made have satisfied me that 
the paucity of the catch and the lies told about it are 
always to be found in an inverse ratio, one to the other. 
Concisely stated, the smaller the catch the bigger the lie, 
until absolute zero is reached, when lying must, ipso facto, 
touch the boiling point. I had never ciphered this out 
until I came to Nantucket. On the island, whether 
one goes on a yacht trolling, or pushes out in a dory, to 
heave and haul a drail or a squid, for blue fish, he can 
always catch enough to satisfy his moderate wishes and 
sometimes his wildest ambition. With a small field glass I 
have often seen a fisherman pull into his dory, anchored a 
few hundred feet from 'Sconset beach, from sixty to 
seventy fine blue fish in a single afternoon. Then when 
cod "strike on," in the spring and fall, he who desires to 
fish can go out and always meet with a fair success and 
sometimes bring in fropi fifty to a hundred cod or pollock, 
off a single tide. From Sasachacha pond a boy or girl will 
often average a perch a minute for hours at a time, to say 
nothing of an occasional eel that will seek the favor of being 
caught to diversify the entertainment. With success so 
startling, the fisherman finds it impossible to lie in recount- 
ing his exploits. Hence his enthusiasm for the sport is 
chilled and his spirits are so depressed that even deep 
potations from the bottle will not dispel the gloom that 
enshrouds him. Discouraged, he leaves for other waters 
where there is at least little margin left for lying and he 
never thinks of Nantucket except in the privacy of self- 
communion. 



SHAEK FISHING. Ill 

And yet, it occurs to me that there is one apparent ex- 
ception to the broad statement I have made in respect to 
the unfavorable condition of things on the island for the 
manufacture of fishermen's lies. But it is apparent only. 
Those who seek to take the predaceous shark, wrestle with 
a game they are not familiar with either in theory [or in 
practice. They neither know the sharking grounds nor 
how to catch the ponderous fish when the ground is 
reached. Of necessity they must rely upon the practical 
man who furnishes boat, tackle and bait. He it is who 
baits the fisherman's hook ; throws out his line ; tells him 
when a shark has struck ; when and how to haul in ; helps 
him in the effort ; hammers the shark on his nose with a 
club to overcome his scruples against leaving the water ; 
pulls him on board the boat ; and finally lands him on the 
beach. Matters are lively for a time and the fisherman 
may perhaps do one-tenth of the work ; but for the con- 
tributory aid he does render he feels that he is a hero. 

Then comes the temptation to lie. Of course, when the 
time comes he will tell his friends that he did it all him- 
self ! That is to be expected. Perhaps he did, but it was 
on the principle of facit per alium facit per se. On the 
question of weight, however, he is forced to take advice. 
There is no platform scale on the beach where the carcass 
is to be buried. The owner of the boat comes to his 
rescue. He has an eye to business. He knows the weak- 
ness of his patron, and of course wants further employ- 
ment. And if he shall say that a consumptive shark that 
might lift the beam at 250, weighs a thousand pounds, the 
fisherman is more than satisfied. On that authority he 
does not hesitate to tell his friends that he caught and 
landed a shark that weighed half a ton ! As the statement 
is not above the average of a fisherman's lie it will probably 
uot be found recorded against him on the day of judgment. 



SAILOR TALK. 

The permanent residents of Siasconset are as unique as 
the place. They are simple in their tastes, and almost to a 
soul confiding and honest. He who should attempt to 
take a mean advantage of a stranger is despised by his 
fellow villagers as much as by the one sought to be his 
victim. The same may be said of the natives of the island 
generally. All have idiosyncrasies resulting from the in- 
timate relation of the island to employment on the seas. 
The older men for years followed the waters. Address 
any old man you meet as "Captain," and in three cases out 
of four you will be likely to hit the mark. If he was not 
a Captain when he retired from service, he was at least a 
mate, and would have taken command had not the whale 
fishery ceased to be profitable. The redundancy of Cap- 
tains is only equaled by the paucity of the men who 
sailed before the mast. It occurs to me that, perhaps 
in those days, they were all Captains. At any rate, men 
who followed the ocean have given character to the island. 
Some women have had extended experience on the seas, 
having taken long voyages with their husbands, and are at 
home in matters pertaining to life on shipboard. Most of 



SAIIiOKS ASHORE. 113 

the young men too, have had some experience in the walks 
of practical seamanship, and all show by their manners, 
and especially by the use of nautical similitudes in ordi- 
nary conversation, their maritime ancestry. If you meet 
an islander with whom you have become familiarly ac- 
quainted, instead of asking you "Where are you going?" 
two to one the greeting will be "How are you heading?" 
The farmer whom you engage to supply produce for your 
table will agree to "land" milk or vegetables from his 
wagon at your door, every morning, fresh picked from his 
garden. If a lady wants you to assist her in winding 
some worsted by holding the skein, and you are careless 
in the performance of the office, she will tell you to hold it 
"taut" or you will get the yarn in a snarl. An old captain 
told me that in eating his breakfast he had got a bone 
"athwart" his throat. If you ride in a box wagon, the 
teamster — it may be an old captain — may ask you to shift 
your seat "fore" or "aft "or "midships" or to set to the 
"leeward" as the case may be. When you try to get a 
joke off on an old "salt" and fail, you may be told that it 
was always hard work to get to the "windward" of hiin. 
A young lady who walked from her bedroom into the 
parlor at night without a lamp, told me she ran "head on" 
to the mantel-piece. She might have added, as her nose 
was bruised, that she had "shivered her cut-water," 
though she didn't. An ardent temperance advocate (and 
there are many such on the island) stated that he was 
drunk but once, and then he didn't get relief until he 
"broke bulk," and he concluded that one experience was 
enough for a life-time. All these expressions, and 
many more equally quaint, I have heard in ordinary 
conversation, and the speakers were quite unaware in what 
they said that there was anything which should strike one 
as strange or unusual. 







1^ 

r 

o ^ 



>;. 



INSULAR NOMENCLATURE. 115 

But I don't believe some things I have heard as having 
been uttered in current speech. I wholly discredit the 
statement that a Nantucket girl complained to her mother 
that her beau, on the previous evening, had kissed her 
unawares on her "starboard cheek" and that the fright 
caused her to jump so suddenly from her seat that she 
"parted her corset hawser!" Nor do I take any stock in 
the story that the wife of an old whaler, on seeing a bustle 
on the person of a modern society woman, wondered what 
use she had for such big "quarter galleries." Nor that a 
young man after a long voyage told his sweetheart, who 
was standing on the wharf awaiting his landing, that he 
knew her the minute he "sighted her cat-heads." 

Then the family nomenclature of the island is quite as 
singular in the frequent recurrence of certain names, and 
it always excites the remark of visitors who make pro- 
tracted stays. The Coffins ; and Folgers ; and Swains ; and 
Husseys ; and Starbucks ; and Macys ; and Gardners ; and 
Chases ; and Pitmans ; and Paddocks ; and Bunkers ;and Cole- 
mans ; are everywhere visible on street signs, or door plates, 
or are heard in everyday speech. Less than a dozen names 
are included in the list of original settlers, and nearly half 
of them are no longer heard on the island. A few other 
names were added by accessions of families from the con- 
tinent, and thus the list of early names on the island was 
swelled to perhaps fifteen. Their descendants married 
and intermarried. Nantucket boys might bring wives 
from the main land, but Nantucket girls didn't feel at 
liberty to propose marriage to off-islanders as an induce- 
ment for them to come to the island and settle, though 
many were carried off to become wives and mothers else- 
Avhere. Hence the original names have been perpetuated 
on Nantucket to an extent which, to the stranger becomes 
confusing. The scriptural injunction to "multiply and re- 



116 SAILOR TALK 

plenish the earth" meant something with a religious 
people. They went at the business as if there was an ex- 
press contract with a forfeiture for non-compliance. The 
net result was, that in less than 175 years there were nearly 
10,000 resident inhabitants. Some of this number was 
probably due to migration from the continent, but what- 
ever was gained in this way was nearly compensated by 
the departure of islanders for the main land. The stock of 
christian names became low and in time was exhausted. 
The doubling of initial appellations was a necessity, and 
even then the first letter of the second name was not 
sufficient to avoid confusion. Thus we hear of Charles 
Frederick Coffin ; and George Frederick Coffin ; and George 
Wendell Macy ; and William Hussey Macy ; and Roland 
Bunker Hussey ; and William Clark Myrick ; and Thomas 
Clarkson Folger ; and many others who are always spoken 
of by their full names as here written. Then "Jr." is a 
very common addition, and "2nd" and "3rd" and even 
"4th" are addenda to surnames to assure identity. A 
Folger living on The Bank for months sought a name for 
a child which no other Folger had taken. Jle found it at 
last in "Oscar." 

But visitors are bothered to recollect given names, and 
they designate them by their employments or the localities 
in which they reside. Thus there was a "Light-house 
Folger," a "Vegetable Folger," a "Blue Fish Folger" and 
a "Captain Folger." Then the natives sometimes desig- 
nate a particular resident by the locality of his residence. 
A Joseph Fisher was known as "Madeket Joe" and a 
Charles Coffin as "Pokomo Charles" that they might not 
be confounded with other Joseph Fishers or Charles 
Coffins. 

To such an extent has the intermarriage of the descend- 
ants of the original settlers gone, that nearly every man, 



BEWILDERING RELATIONSHIPS. 117 

woman and child descended from them is related to every 
other. Cousinship, and uncleship and auntship overlap in 
a half dozen directions. A Hussey may be an uncle to a 
Coffin and a nephew of a Starbuck, and the Starbuck and 
the Coffin be second cousins to each other. Captain Baxter 
is a recognized oracle on matters of family relationship, 
as on everything else. "What he doesn't know is not worth 
learning. He says that there are men on the island who 
can be shown to be their own great uncles ! That he 
knows of children who are the second cousins of their own 
mothers ! Furthermore he has pointed out to me more 
than one man who is both a brother-in-law and nephew of 
his third cousin. And to cap the climax, he said that he 
once called at a house in town at which a tea-party was 
under full headway, and of the eight ladies present, five 
were both first and second cousins and sisters-in-law of 
one another ! And yet to this day not one of them had had 
her mind shattered by the effort to trace out the relation- 
ship. And the Captain told me that if I doubted the story 
he could show me the cover of the identical tea-pot in 
which the inspiring beverage was drawn on that memor- 
able afternoon ! With evidence so convincing and near at 
hand, I could only express myself entirely satisfied ! 

But a still more marvelous coincidence came to my 
knowledge. On the eve of Fourth of July, a few years 
since, the oldest boy of John Asa Fisher, 2nd, exploded a 
fire-cracker under the mare of Peleg Starbuck, Jr., as she 
was standing hitched to a box wagon on the corner of 
Main and Whale streets. The mare didn't appreciate the 
act as an ebullition of youthful patriotism. To her equine 
understanding it was intended as a joke on herself. That 
she didn't like the joke is manifest from the fact that 
she ran away and broke the wagon into a dozen pieces and 
knocked down and ran over Jonathan David Myrick. The 



118 SAILOR TALK. 

injured man was carried into the store of Ebenczer Pad- 
dack, 4th. Obed Gardner, 3rd, ran for Doctor Pitman, who 
came at once. But the man was so much injured that in 
spite of surgical aid he died before night. 'Squire Coifin 
held an inquest on the body. Frederick William Folger 
made the coflQ.n. Elder Macy preached the funeral dis- 
course. Kowland Bunker Hussey wrote and published an 
obituary in the Inquirer and Mirror. Jabez Chase, 2nd, 
dug the grave and Washington Irving Coleman furnished 
the headstone. And an orthodox quaker named Swain, who 
never draws on his imagination at less than 10 days' sight, 
solemnly assured me that every one here named in con- 
nection with the catastrophe, including himself, was within 
the degree of fourth cousin of every other except the 
mare ; and how it happened that she could not claim kin- 
ship was a question which convulsed the island for over 
six months, for the mare was a native and had a pedigree 
as long as the bow that Friend Swain had drawn for 
my edification. 



SCRATCHING GRAVEL. 

At Siasconset a man playa many parts. A family can- 
not bo reared and educated with its head following a single 
pursuit. There are no organized industries, if I except 
building, which for the past few years has been active to 
provide accommodations for the annually increasing 
patronage of summer visitors. There is but little farm- 
ing in the strict sense of the word. There is land, thous- 
ands of acres, but the soil is lean and light, and without 
liberal fertilization is not productive. For grazing it might 
be made valuable. At one period it was largely devoted 
to sheep raising. There were fully ten thousand sheep on 
the island. 

But farming cannot be successfully followed without 
farmers. I know all about it. I have tried it and can 
speak feelingly on the subject. Years ago the strange im- 
pulse seized me to become a farmer that I might try 
thenceforward to lead an honest life. To that end I bought 
a splendid farm, well situated, and with a generous soil. 
Fearing that one farm might not assure the result I 
sought, I bought another. Somehow or other, my 



120 SCRATCHING GRAVEL. 

methods of farming were not such as to result in a be- 
wildering success. In fact, during a three years, active 
pursuit of distinction as an agriculturist, I found it abso- 
lutely jnecessary to follow my legitimate pursuit in the 
city for nine months in the year to enable me to make 
both ends meet on my farm, at the end of the season. 
Gradually the appalling fact was forced upon my mind that 
the more I was present on the property the smaller were 
the crops, a consideration which constrained me to aban- 
don the idea of farming except in a vicarious way. Sub- 
sequent experience didn't change the aspect of things. 
Cultivating the soil by mail and telegraph was not, in my 
case, certainly, attended with a success so startling that I 
can conscientiously recommend the plan for general 
adoption. I have no confidence that with the telephone I 
could have improved matters. Indeed the belief grew 
upon me until it came to be at last a settled conviction 
that I was not built upon the right model to achieve either 
fame or fortune as a tiller of the soil. It was with re- 
luctance that I made the confession, but a decent regard 
for truth compelled me to disclose the fact, which I did in 
the strictest confidence to a few of my most intimate friends ; 
and as usual in such cases, each one told his friend under 
an injunction of secrecy, and that friend told another under 
the same conditions, and in a fortnight's time it was known 
all over the entire county, and in six months throughout 
the State. At all events, I had my belly-full of farming, 
audit would not have required a great deal of argument or 
even prayerful persuasion to have induced me to sell out. 
Indeed I tried to. I earnestly sought for a man who had 
it in him to build up an enterprise on a domain where my 
aesthetic methods had only borne annual crops of disappoint- 
ment, and who, I thought, was sighing for a spot in which 
were buried the blasted hopes of a saddened wavfarer. 




6b 









122 SCKATCHING GBAVEL. 

whereon to illustrate his genius in actual works to an 
astonished and admiring world. I wanted to show to 
him the promised land. For years I waited, but he didn't 
come. 

On Nantucket, sailors do not seem to be any better fitted 
for farming than city-bred men, "When young they don't 
tackle kindly to it, and when old they do it in the most 
perfunctory manner. When the whale fishery ceased to 
pay, many who retired from the waters essayed farming. 
But what they had learned about plowing the seas was of 
no service to them when they tried to plow the land. They 
met obstacles at all points. When they ordered an ox- 
team to "port" or "starboard," the animals were either 
obtuse or perverse in obeying the command. "Gee !" and 
"Haw!" were imperatives of direction without meaning 
to the average mariner. To begin the study of a dictionary 
of land navigation after years of experience at sea was out 
of the question. When he undertook to manage horses, 
as the Irish sailor said, he was "all at sea." Everything 
was reversed. The steering gear, instead of being in the 
stern, where on shipboard, he had been taught to look for 
it, he found in the bow. That of itself was confusing. 
When on a vessel, if he put his helm a-starboard, it was 
fore ordained that she Avould sheer to port. But in driving, 
when he pulled ±he starboard rein instead of going to 
port the wagon hauled off in the other direction. That 
was not all. A double team was a further complication. 
As he scanned it with his weather eye it seemed to him as 
a sort of catamaran intended for land service. He had 
seen such duplex craft off the coast of Brazil, but they 
always seemed to him awkward to manage. So far as he 
was concerned, he was willing to grant an exclusive right 
in perpetuity to South Americans to use them. They 
never inspired him with a sense of safety as a sea-going 



SAILOBS ON THE SOIIj. 123 

craft. But a catamaran on land, to his mind, was still 
more uncertain. He could never feel sure of reaching 
port with wagon and freight in good order. At any 
moment, the port horse might take a notion to' kick the 
starboard "horse on the port quarter, and if the event 
happened when he was tacking ship, the Lord only could 
tell where vessel and cargo would land. Again, the star- 
board horse might balk and run stern on the wagon at 
the precise moment when the port horse was making 
headway under a six-knot breeze ! What then would 
happen? To the nautical mind, these possibilities were 
suggestive, if not portentous. Therefore, by tacit con- 
sent, double teams were allowed to go into disuse, and to 
this day, the regulation vehicle on Nantucket, for pleasure 
or heavy work, is a box-wagon or a box-cart. And though 
a few double carriages have been brought to or made on 
the island for livery stable keepers to cater to the caprice 
of "swell" visitors who wish to ride over moors, the Nan- 
tucket man and woman anchor their faith to the bottom- 
boards of the one-horse box- wagon. 

Farming therefore has never thrived on Nantucket, and 
probably five-sixths of the land is to-day uncultivated. A 
few farmers cut hay enough for their own stock and to 
supply some for use in the town. Some sheep are raised, 
enough for lamb and mutton for home consumption, and 
to furnish a little for the continent. Milk, eggs, and 
chickens, are also produced in considerable quantities for 
the table for summer visitors. But there is scarce any 
cultivation of the soil except for the production of garden 
vegetables. That is one employment which is profitable 
during the warm season. Another source of income is 
letting their horses and wagons to parties who make 
jaunts over the island. Others devote themselves during 
the summer to blue, scup, perch, lobster, clam and qua- 



124 SCEATCHING GKAVEIi. 

haiig ^fishing. Some families rent rooms furnished to 
visitors, who prefer the quiet of a private house to life in 
a hotel. Now and then an old sailor who is used to the 
pack-needle finds employment in making awnings and 
tents and setting them up on spars on the beach to afford 
shelter from the sun to visitors who delight to be close to 
the breakers. The wives of residents, some of them in- 
telligent and well-to-do, earn money by doing laundry 
work and making bread, biscuits and pastry for visiting 
families ; while some of the daughters are employed in 
hotels and boarding-houses as chambermaids and wait- 
resses and thus they obtain the means to further their 
education during the residue of the year. 

But in September the visitors vanish. Hardly have the 
people got their houses to rights after weeks of neglect 
that they might serve their off-island guests, when, presto ! 
the fall fishing begins, and then, teamster, farmer, gardener, 
mechanic, laborer, and perhaps store clerk and even old 
shipmaster are out in their dories catching cod until 
winter sets in. Then the islander finds time to do odds 
and ends of repairing of house, or stable, or boat, or 
harness, until a heavy western gale sets in and drives 
the seaweed — kelp it is called — in large piles upon the 
beach. At once all hands turn to with their forks and 
throw it back from the shore to let it drain and afterwards 
to sell it to gardeners and farmers to use for fertilizing 
the soil for another year's crop of table produce. In the 
Spring comes another fishing season which lasts about six 
weeks, and as the cod disappear, bluefish "strike on" and 
the event is the premonition of the visitors. 

But at any season, though more especially during the 
winter months, a scene of wild excitement may occur upon 
The Bank. A vessel, which for days has been approach- 
ing the coast under continuous cloud and has lost her 



MANHOOD. 125 

reckoning, or moving through the dense fogs which some- 
times occur off the land, may stril^e upon Bass Eip to the 
eastward or on ' 'The Old Man's Back" to the southward ; 
and when the fog lifts or the morning breaks, is in plain 
sight from The Bank pounded by heavy seas upon the 
sands. In a moment everybody is out-of-doors. Tele- 
scopes are leveled at the distressed vessel. Volunteer 
crews quickly assemble at the life-saving station of the 
Massachusetts Humane Society, and draw out the life-boat 
and the appliances for such emergencies and move it for- 
ward across the beach to launch on the surf at once if it 
can be done with safety. But sometimes a heavy gale is 
blowing, and billows in huge volumes are surging upon the 
sand, and throwing a white fringe a hundred feet towards 
The Bank. Hours may thus be passed before it is possi- 
ble to leave on their errand of mercy for the rescue of im- 
periled lives. Clad in their oil-cloth garments they await 
their opportunity. Statecraft, learning, eloquence, social 
position and style, stand abashed before the nobility of 
simple manhood. Hearts to impel, courage to undertake, 
and brawn to successfully encounter and override dangers 
take rank as the highest qualities. On The Bank they 
hear the voices of their wives, children, parents, sisters 
and brothers. There are their little homes with the small 
savings of years of toil. As they stand their lives are safe. 
Before them is the ocean with its waters lashed by the 
gale into wild tumult. The shifting fringe of spray in 
which they stand is the line that divides safety from 
danger. They watch with steadfast gaze the movement of 
the mighty billows as they come thundering upon the 
beach, and await their opportunity. They are alongside 
the life-boat, in which the oars are ready shipped in the 
rowlocks. At last the supreme moment comes. A mighty 
breaker dashes towards them ; and then, a dozen strong 




J 

J. 



>3 



LIFE-SAVERS. 127 

arms push out the boat to meet it, and as'it lifts the bow 
from the sands each man springs into his seat, and quicker 
than thought is pulling heavily at his oar, and the boat is 
moving out from shoi-e, while the veteran sailor in com- 
mand stands in the stern with the steering oar in hand, to 
guide the little craft to the rescue of, their fellow-beings. 
Steadily they pull in unison, riding over the crest of one 
wave tO' disappear from sight in the trough of the sea 
beyond, again to appear on another, never for a moment 
resting in their labors, until those whom they seek to 
succor are reached. In the meantime glasses are leveled 
at their little boat, through which anxious eyes are watch- 
ing until it seems but a little speck dancing on the surface 
of the waters. They may find the seas breaking heavily 
against and perhaps over the vessel, with either bow or 
stern raised out of the water. The passengers, or crew, 
or both are taken on their boat, and again they push off 
towards the shore which they reach after hours of absence, 
tired and sore from continuous exertion, and it may be 
with the seeds of a lingering disease sown in their sj^stems 
by exposure to the bleak winds of the winter. 

At other times the vessel, without warning, may be 
driven directly on the beach in the midst of a heavy snow 
storm or fog. Then the residents on The Bank can extend 
their aid more readily and effectually both in saving lives 
and property. The excitement is still more intense, for 
everything is within sight, even to the smallest detail of 
procedure. 

For the services of the brave men who imperil their 
lives to save those of their fellow-beings, what is the re- 
ward? It may be only the thanks of the grateful people 
whom they have rescued. It may be a medal voted by the 
Humane Society. Or they may secure pieces of property 
which have floated upon the beach or they have picked up 



128 SCEATOHING GEAVEIi. 

in the waters, and for which there is no claimant ; or, it may 
be they will receive salvage on property they have saved 
to its owners in large quantities. But fifty or a hundred 
dollars for the daring courage of a man in behalf of those 
in peril, is a large sum to receive ; and oftener the result to 
him is merely nominal. 

This is but a brief sketch of careers of the people of the 
island who live by the labor of their hands. There is 
scarce a man who does not during the year work in, at 
least, two or three callings, and some are so handy as to 
find themselves useful in a half dozen. In 'Sconset is a 
representative character of this class. 

Captain John Morris has become an almost every-day 
necessity. He is an old sailor in both the whale fishery 
and the merchant service. He is now the factotum of the 
village. He is the bricklayer and plasterer; the house 
painter; the jack carpenter ; the clock repairer; the tent 
and awning maker. He is no slouch when it comes to re- 
pairing furniture and upholstering. His talents as a 
hydraulic engineer are practically recognized by calling on 
him to put pumps in order when they manifest perversity 
in the matter of lifting water. Of course he is a fisherman. 
There are tradesmen on the island in various branches. 
Their stores are mostly located on the main street of Nan- 
tucket, or others immediately intersecting it. Some, begun 
years ago, on out-of-the-way thoroughfares, are still con- 
tinued in the same localities. The tradesmen exhibit the 
versatility of genius that I have described as common to 
men in other callings. The pursuits they follow are some- 
times strangely heterogeneous. One dry-goods merchant 
unites with his regular trade the sale of stocks and bonds. 
His store is the stock exchange. He is "bull' or "bear," 
according as he prognosticates the market. In dry 
goods he is generally a "bull," but with old stock he ham- 



VERSATILITY OF GENIUS. 129 

mers the market until he is rid of it. Another one was 
for years the popular proprietor of a leading hotel. At 
meal time he moved lively among the guests to see that 
their appetites were satisfied. Between meals he tumbled 
muslins, and dress goods, and cloths about on the counter, 
and in seductive tones induced ladies to purchase. A hard- 
ware and stove dealer accepts fire risks, and he also uses his 
blandishments with both buyers and sellers in the effort 
to effect exchanges of real property. Another is an ex- 
tensive dealer in junk, though Ann street would discount 
and beat him every time. The tinsmith sells crockery 
and glassware, while the grocers add to their subsistence 
by handling crockery and woodenware. The stationer 
deals in bric-a-brac, oil paintings and antique crockery 
and furniture. The coal dealer sells hay and feed, but he 
sighed for new fields of usefulness, and so became the 
agent of the Fall Kiver and Newport lines of steamers 
and of the Telegraph Company. As he has still some 
time left on his hands it is expected that he will take the 
agency for the sale of pianos and organs, and perhaps start 
a photographic gallery. The avarice of the lumber mer- 
chant was not satisfied with the profits in his regular line, 
so he took up brick, lime and cement, and then to make 
both ends meet he started a coal-yard, The dealer in fire- 
wood unites tiles and chimney-pots and jig-sawing with 
his legitimate business. The watchmaker is at the same 
time an umbrella surgeon, an artist in oil, and finds time 
to cultivate his taste for music. He plays the fiddle and 
executes on the violin with equal facility. Another 
runs a circulating library and is also a taxidermist. The 
furniture dealer has added stoves to his regular trade, and 
he strengthens his vocal chords by exercising the functions 
of an auctioneer. The dentist paints pictures, cultivates 
the muse of poetry and the graces of oratory. He will 



130 SCRATCHING GKAVEIi. 

plug a tooth, write an ode, a sonnet, or an epic, or deliver 
an address on the slightest provocation. In winters when 
everybody else hybernates, his friends let him loose to 
lecture on the continent. 

The stranger who visits the town is often startled by a 
phenomenon of desolation that comes on with no more 
premonition than a sneeze. It occurs at mid-day. As 
the church clock strikes twelve, merchant, lawyer, capital- 
ist, clerk, mechanic and apprentice, hurriedly surveys 
the shrunken proportions of his abdominal region, and 
with dangerous haste rushes headlong to the street, locks 
the door of store, office, or shop, and makes lively strides 
towards home. Then only is the Nantucket man in a 
hurry. The objective point is dinner. Gain is lost sight 
of. Sympathy appeals to him in vain. The music of the 
peripatetic hand-organ loses its charms. Cyclone, nor 
earthquake, will deflect him from his course until the cor- 
poreal hold is stowed with noonday cheer. The luckless 
visitor who wishes to buy something must walk listlessly 
about the streets for an hour until the Nantucket stomach 
is satisfied. Even then its possessor may go to the barber 
shop, or do some odd job about the house to extend the 
purgatorial experience of the stranger for a quarter or a 
half hour more. During the season of summer visitors 
there are a few exceptions to this rule. But in autumn, 
winter and spring it is universal. At such times one- is 
impressed with a sense of loneliness like unto that which 
would be felt by a North Carolina 'possum let loose to 
wander in the streets of Pompeii under the moonlight. 



PHYSIC. 

Foe over a century there was no doctor on Nantucket. 
Zacheus Mac3% a man without medical education, was for 
sixty years the bone-setter when casualties made surgical 
assistance on the island necessary. It is recorded that he 
did the service with a creditable skill, and it is also stated 
that, in about fifty years, he performed over two thousand 
operations. Breaking bones and making dislocations was 
evidently an important industry in those days on Nan- 
tucket. Still it didn't pay. For the |surgeon regarded his 
skill as a special gift, and would never receive compensa- 
tion for his services ! This fact lived long in the memories 
of the people, greatly to the detriment of the professional 
doctor when he effected a lodgment, for come he did at 
last. But he found himself on missionary ground. The 
people had lived for generations in appalling ignoranc ) of 
sickness. What was worse, they didn't seem inclined to 
take lessons. But a more abject moral degradation was 
made manifest in an utter want of understanding that a 
doctor didn't physic for fun, but in dead earnest, and ex- 
pected to be paid for it, too. Converts were scarce and 
fees were sparingly paid. 



OPPOSING SCHOOLS. 133 

Of course the doctor was an old school practitioner. To 
impress the people with the Importance of his services he 
had to resort to heroic treatment. Anything short of that 
the patient didn't appreciate. Drastic purgative, power- 
ful alterative, lancet, blister, actual cautery and turnkey 
were convincing evidences that something was the matter 
with them. He had his own way in practice except that 
there was not enough of it. 

But in the course of time the homoeopathic doctor in- 
vaded the island. Opposition oftentimes stimulates busi- 
ness. On Nantucket it didn't, though it was fierce, and all 
the more so because between rival schools of medicine. 
When doctors disagree in the fundamentals of theory and 
practice, the confidence of patients is apt to be a little 
shaky at the butt. The code of medical ethics would not 
permit him of the regular faculty to counsel with, or even 
tolerate one whom the canons of the profession declared 
to be culpably irregular, and, not to draw too fine a point 
upon it, a quack. With contemptuous sneer he furtively 
glanced at the stunted proportions of the pocket-case of 
his rival which held the attenuated medicaments to be 
smilingly taken on the principle of simllia similibus 
curantur. He of the high potencies scowled at the ponder- 
ous pill bags loaded down with calomel ; and jalap ; and 
blue mass ; and laudanum ; and paregoric ; and spirits of 
nitre ; and pungent carminatives ; and Spanish flies ; and 
perhaps a surreptitious lancet to have a quiet bleed in 
memory of bygone days. This condition of things nearly 
ruined the business. The regular doctor largely lost his 
practice, and he of the new school didn't gain it. 

Beside, the people were epidemically healthy. It was 
not from' natural obduracy, but to discourage the idea of 
making sickness and expense convertible terms. The 
Nantucketer could adapt himself to divers callings in 



134 PHYSIC. 

handicraft, and he didn't see why, if he had any ailment, 
he could not do double duty and both prescribe physic and 
swallow it. By so doing he could select a more palatable 
dose, which he could not do if the doctor bossed the busi- 
ness. Besides he could make it more acceptable by mix- 
ing it with old Medford rum, and that, experience had 
proven to him, Iwas most "masterly warmin' to his in- 
wards." This indifference to medical learning and ability 
became chronic. It was distressing to the representatives 
of both schools. It was a weary pilgrimage, and all the 
time living on short commons, before^ the doctor felt his 
calling and election sure. 

But, by a stroke of genius, this itching desire of the 
Nantucket man to practice on himself, and his tendency to 
thrift in saving doctors' fees, were turned to profitable ac- 
count. How and where negotiations were had, has never 
been revealed ; but certain it is that, without diminution 
of professional antagonism and the personal animosity 
proceeding therefrom, with withering scowls and con- 
temptuous frowns exchanged between allopathic sulky 
and homoeopathic gig, diplomatic notes were exchanged 
and secret conferences had, which resulted in the starting 
of a drug store in their joint names, stocked with a full 
line of pharmaceutical preparations, to which they added 
patent medicines in variety sufficient to cover every known 
disease, with profuse explanations of their curative powers 
and directions for use. 

The success of the movement was simply bewildering. 
Men who had suffered from good health, acute, chronic, or 
malignant, became conscious of ailments that needed im- 
mediate attention. The apothecary shop invited their 
patronage. With understandings illuminated by the wrap- 
pers of medicine bottles and boxes, they studied prognostics 
and diagnostics, and dove deep into the mysteries of 



COMPLICATED DISOEDEKS. 135 

pathology and morbid growth and development. They 
bought and got around one remedy after another until 
muscle, and nerve, and cartilage, were saturated with 
curealls. If the direction were to take a spoonful every 
two hours, they reasoned that, if they took two spoons full 
every hour they would get well four times as fast ! The 
profits on the medicines sold were greater than the fees 
the doctors had ever believed possible, even in moments 
of delirious hope. That was not all. Simple ailments 
soon become complex. That which, at the inception, was 
a mild colic, soon involved abdominal viscera, kidney, 
liver, spleen, diaphragm, stomach, aorta, spinal marrow, 
thoracic cavity and even cerebrum and cerebellum. Still 
they were not happy. In fact, they found themselves 
running on shoals in trying to navigate medical waters. 
They had to take soundings. At last, reluctantly, one or 
the other doctor was called in to pilot them to port. He 
left them anchored in a haven of health, and ready to re- 
sume self-pi es 'ription whenever they again felt slightly 
under the weather. 

It is evident that the doctor is on the island to stay, the 
very few there is of him. To his credit, he never lets his 
patients die. Old people are met everywhere. Those who 
are not old are aged. Nobody under middle age is allowed 
to remain on the island unless he takes out a license. When 
people arrive at the standard of old age, somewhere in the 
eighties, they anchor. Years go by. Still they are seen 
moving slowl}- about unchanged in appearance and walk. 
Seemingly Death has a mortgage on their corporeal estates, 
but he never forecloses. 

Generations ago a grave yard was started so that the island 
might be rendered attractive to atrabilious people who 
were seeking a comfortable place in which to die. It was 
conceived in fraud of the rights of gloomy misanthropes, 



136 PHYSIC. 

and the scheme should long since have been exposed. The 
native never dies. The dying visitor renews his lease of 
life. The graveyard didn't pay. The only one who made 
anything out of it was the man who was allowed to mow 
the grass from it each year. Now and then a sailor who 
fell from the cross-trees or yard-arm, or down the hatch- 
way of a ship and was killed, was planted in the ground. 
But the paucity of the headstones was proof positive that 
Nantucket was no place for a man to die. At last the pro- 
moters of the enterprise had to resort to importing corpses 
for burial. They were smuggled in after nightfall and in- 
terred. By this discreditable means they have fairly 
stocked the ground and make a respectable show of graves. 
But in time the natives, by adopting high living and 
fashionable habits, and especially by prescribing medicines 
for themselves, may be brought to realize the propriety of 
getting up home-made cadavers instead of paying tribute 
to foreign manfacturers. 




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LAW. 

The Nantucket Bar stands pre-eminent in its profound 
appreciation of equity and justice, its lieroic determina- 
tion to furtlier tlieir purposes even at personal sacrifice, 
and tlie amicable feelings existing within it. There is 
only one of him for nearly thirty-five hundred inhabitants. 
With the same ratio in New York, the list of lawyers 
would shrink to a beggarly three hundred and fifty, 
instead of over five thousand for its population of a mil- 
lion and a quarter. Clients' pockets would become ple- 
thoric for want of somebody to encourage litigation. 
Judges would hold sinecures, and their positions would be 
abolished by an amendment to the organic law. The Nan- 
tucket man never does anything to-day which can just as 
well be put off until to-morrow, save, always, eating and 
sleeping. Even the beginning of a lawsuit is postponed 
until it can be attended to without too much exertion. 
Often before the time comes, both parties get into a less 
litigious and an even tranquil frame of mind. The Quakers 
who have given character to the island have left the im- 
print of peace upon the impulses of the people. The only 
moneyed institution in Town is the "Pacific" Bank. But 



THE NANTUCKET BAB. 1^^ 

if through natural perversity, men who have differences 
cannot, or will not settle them, one goes to the Bar and 
asks him to begin a suit. Viewing such a procedure as 
possible, the other party goes to the Bar to defend him, 
if a suit shall be begun. The Bar is embarrassed^ To 
take a retainer from both sides is unprofessional. He is 
acquainted with, and it may be is the personal friend of 
both parties to the issue. He is a lonesome lawyer on a 
lonely isle. Feelings of common humanity will not permit 
him to throw the weight of his knowledge, and experience, 
and skill in favor of one side when there is no one to ad- 
vocate the cause of the other. Glad visions of fees are 
snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye. By natural gravi- 
tation he falls into the position of a peacemaker. He 
hears the statements of each side. He persuades one. He 
remonstrates with the other. Perhaps he cajoles, and, if 
necessary, threatens both. Finally he undertakes an unoffi- 
cial arbitrament and suggests a basis of settlement which, 
though unsatisfactory to one and perhaps both, each feels 
bound to accept. For the sacrifices he makes, he may get 
their joint and several thanks; or he may not. He has 
accepted a retainer from neither, nor has he begun or de- 
fended an action. Indeed, by his influence, they have been 
debarred the luxury of a lawsuit. Hence neither party 
feels that the Bar is entitled to a fee and he is too modest 
to ask for one. Thanks, though ever so heartily tendered, 
will not stay the stomachs of a small wife and large f amil, 
Tuy Spring bonnets, nor even plug-hats, and broadcloth 
suits which the Bar must always wear; or contribute to 
h Home Missionary society, even with ten pound blue- 
tllt twenty cents a piece, fresh codfish at four cents a 
pound, and with time to set lobster pots, and with qua- 
haugs and clams to be had for the digging. 
. But when the difference is with an off islander, the Nan- 



140 LAW. 

tucket Bar braces up. He is retained by the native, and is 
ready to prosecute or defend; to draw declaration or 
plea ; to interpose demurrer ; to apply tor or move to dis- 
solve injunction ; to proceed at common law, or in equity, 
or in admiralty. He will examine and cross-examine wit- 
nesses; object to evidence ; except to rulings ; will argue 
and request to charge ; will abuse the opposing counsel ; 
will flatter the jury and bully the Court in the most ap- 
proved manner. It is to be hoped that he always gets a 
good fee. It is doubtful. 

But the Bar does have an office practice. He examines 
titles; draws deeds and^mortgages, contracts and agree- 
ments. He executes commissions issued out c f the courts 
of foreign jurisdiction. He even draws wills, though for 
what, the Lord only knows, for nobody ever dies. And 
he is a real estate and pension agent. And then too, 
he is a Justice of the Peace and Trial Justice, in which 
capacities he administers justice when each party acts as 
his own lawyer or when foreign lawyers are retained. 
Then he pockets his legal fees. They are not enoi-mous. 
Still his professional joints are at times a little stiff from 
non-use and the lack of lubrication with generous com- 
pensation. For years his morning prayers and nightly 
vigils have been that the Lord would vouchsafe another 
lawyer for the island. When Mr. Charles O'Conor came 
from New York and took up his residence in Town a ray 
of hope illumined the darkness of the horizon which en- 
circled the solitary lawyer. But so soon as it was an- 
nounced that the distinguished jurist had come to escape 
clients, and not to get them, the Bar subsided into a 
hopeless gloom. 

This being the situation of affairs in respect to civil 
practice, on the criminal side the outlook is no more 
promising. There is no crime except on the skirmish line. 







J 



ml I r 



• I— 



142 liAW. 

The small boy who makes predatory excursions against 
melon patches is about the worst malefactor known. As 
there are several of him, it is difficult to connect a special 
offence with a particular boy. Thus it is that he always 
escapes the condign punishment that otherwise would be 
meted out to him, to strike terror into the hearts of 
evil-doers. The tramp is a being heard and read of, but 
never seen on the island. Dwelling-houses are like treas- 
ures in heaven where thieves do not break in and steal, 
Often they are left for hours unlocked while the families 
are absent. When locked, the keys are theoretically hid- 
den under the door-step or under a side shingle by the door 
casing, but practically in full view of the passing wayfarer. 
For years at a time, the common jail is without an inmate. 
Some twenty years ago the solitary occupant sent word to 
the selectmen that if they didn't fix it so as to keep the 
sheep from running in and bothering him he should leave. 
And he meant business too. The structure is a ramshackle 
affair, too dilapidated for security and not old enough for 
a picturesque ruin. In appearance it is on the dividing 
line between a building that a close-fisted old curmudgeon 
would Avillingly dedicate to the use of his poor relations rent 
free, and a haunted house. It has ponderous bolts and 
bars on doors and windows, but would have no terrors 
for a third-rate New York sneak thief. 

Years ago an offending colored brother who was await- 
ing trial on a charge of petty larceny, pried np the roof 
with a bench that was in his cell, and vamosed from the 
island in a stolen dory. Another prisoner, each night I 
lifted a board from the floor of his dungeon, went outside, I 
and had a good time about the Town, but was always back 
in his cell before morning to suffer the penalty of his ; 
offence and greet the keeper on his early visit with a 
sad and dejected look. 



A SINECUBE. 143 

The jailer himself has a soft thing of it. For some un- 
accountable reason, the Town authorities in starting the 
enterprise decided to pay him an annual salary with 
house rent thrown in and not by the piece. It was a mis. 
take that has been a source of poignant regret ever since. 
If it were not for the exertion it would involve it would be 
changed even now. The salary was fixed at fifty dollars a 
year. For years the position was held by the father of the 
present incumbent, who received it as a family heredita- 
ment. It is a serious question with the taxpayers whether 
the institution ought not to be abolished. The jailer has 
everything to get and nothing to do. The tax to pay his 
salary is regarded as a reckless waste of the people's sub- 
stance. Still further it is urged that it may be the insidi- 
ous beginning of a hereditary aristocracy of ofSce holders 
which may grow in proportions until it shall sap the founda- 
tions of republican institutions, sow the seeds of monarchy 
and bear ultimate fruit in absolutism, co-extensive with 
the present domain of American freedom ! Yet, the most 
vehement croaker does not dare at town meeting to move 
to dispense with the dungeon or its keeper, because he in- 
wardly feels that, at any moment, a cyclone of human 
turpitude may burst upon and sweep the island, leaving in 
its track ruin and disaster in decimated hen-roosts, rifled 
pork barrels, depleted sugar boxes and plundered tea 
canisters, to say nothing of peccadillos in the way of em- 
bezzlement, defalcation and violations of trusts. 



DIVINITY. 

If the clergymen of Nantucket are paid good salaries 
they hold enviable positions. But the presumptions are 
against it The Quaker preacher whose influence was 
once coextensive with the island had, for generations, in- 
veighed against a hireling ministry. His words sank deep 
into the hearts of his hearers, and they never forgot the 
admonition when they pulled out of the meeting-house 
and anchored their faiths within the pews of steepled 
houses It is doubtful if the ministers find their incomes 
so great as to be a care and a burden. They are not rated 
in the books of the commercial agencies. Their credit is 
good, not because of treasures laid up on earth, but be- 
cause of their honorable standing as men. 

But it is an easy job for the pastors to keep their lambs 
from going astray. If one of them has a sinful impulse, 
he feels too lazy to be wicked, if no higher motive actuated 
his course. There are no great local sins to call for 
anathema, and very few small ones to demand reproach. 
Pastors and people, without regard to sectarian Imes, 
earnestly co-operate in the advocacy of temperance and 
good morals, and the temperance meeting is a regular 




iifl|!}f 



146 DIVINITY. 

weekly gathering. With such a community the preacher's 
invective must be aimed against extra-insular wickedness. 
When slavery existed Nantucket was the hotbed of deep- 
seated opposition to that relic of barbarism. 

There are no polemical discourses to disturb the general 
good feeling which exists among the people, and much 
less to arouse angry passion. The sleep-inducing proper- 
ties of the air will not admit of the surface of the religious 
waters being rippled, though several denominations are 
represented, Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, Episco- 
palian and Koman Catholic. The most aggressive mem- 
ber of the church militant catches the infection of peace 
on earth and good will toward men. The Friends, too, 
have their meeting-house, in which First and Fifth day 
meetings are regularly held. Of the peaceful they are the 
most peaceful. Neither minister nor elder is fired by the 
zeal of George Fox, their founder, to enter the sanctuaries 
of others and cry aloud against their ungodliness ; nor do 
angry churchmen or magistrates feel it incumbent to 
abate the Quaker by prison bars or gibbets. That they 
were once in a large majority on the island I have never 
wondered. Its air is suited to their peaceful thoughts, 
and the thoughts, in their turn, have given tone to the 
people. Conscience is everywhere manifested. The 
cheats and petty knaves can almost be counted on one's 

fingers. 

In no other community has woman been exalted to the com- 
manding position she holds on the island. In the religious 
meetings of the Society of Friends, her gift to preach was 
as readily recognized as that of man. Husband, and 
brother, and son, were away on protracted voyages, often 
lasting for years, and to the wives was confided and upon 
them was thrown the responsibility of the nurture and 
education of children and the care and management of 



woman's position. 147 

property. How well they performed the tasks thus as- 
signed to them is manifest in the character of their de- 
scendants. Woman was the active force in moulding the 
character of the people ; and though there are but few 
of the Friends left, she still occupies the proud posi- 
tion accorded to her on the island a century and a half 
ago. In public meetings her right to speak is a matter of 
course. In nearly every society women are among the 
officers, and sometimes they hold the highest positions. 
The culmination of this feeling is found in the fact that 
the present pastor of the Congregational Church — the 
oldest on the island — is a lady and a native. For years 
the society had had difficulty in procuring stated preach- 
ing. The intelligent manner in which she had spoken at 
meetings resulted in her taking the pulpit for a single day, 
and so well did she fill the position that she has continued 
for four years, though without ordination, at the head of 
the congregation. At last, in 1884, she was formally 
ordained to the pastorate, and her daily life and her words 
uttered from the pulpit alike testify how well she is fitted 
for the office. 

But on The Bank, for near two centuries, there was no 
edifice dedicated to religious worship. In latter years, 
with a large summer population, the want of such a struc- 
ture was felt. A little chapel was built. It was eclectic 
in its origin. To raise funds for its construction people 
of all shades of belief chipped in. Orthodox and hetero- 
dox; dogmatist and latitudinarian ; trinitarian and uni- 
tarian ; the believer in eternal torments for the wicked, 
and he for whom sheol and hades have no terrors ; the 
communicant who insisted upon immersion as a means of 
saving grace, and he who believed that sprinkling is ample ; 
hardshell and pedobaptist; high churchman and low 
churchman, each contributed of his means, and by another 



148 DIVINITY. 

summer the building was completed. During the season, 
visiting ministers of different denominations address the 
assembled worshipers representing beliefs as manifold as 
the hues of Joseph's ulster. But with such an origin, and 
with such a congregation, strict doctrinal sermons are not 
heard within the portals of the little chapel. Were they, 
the teachings of a summer would present a startling 
mosaic of incongruous theological views. But there is no 
disposition on the part of teachers to excite religious ani- 
mosity. The air of the island discourages it. And as 
the metes and bounds of sectarian domains in the Chris- 
tian world are perpetually shifting, by reason of one sect, 
in meek and lowly spirit, poaching upon the preserves of 
another, until now the lines of deraarkation have, in some 
cases, become confused, if not almost obliterated, it is not 
probable that theological disputes will ever be heard in 
'Sconset chapel loud enough to drown the roar of the 
breakers upon the beach. 
So mote it be. 







>Vi^ 



TXIE 



Credible Chronicles 



OF 



The Patchwork Village, 



'SOOISrSET BY THE SEA. 



EVELYN T. UNDERHILL & CO., 

NO. 22 SPBUCE STKEET, NEW YOEK. 

1886. 




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